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The kitchen at Station 51, was a hot bed of activity. Chet's mouth was still gaping open over the sight of the rescue squad decorated cake that Roy and Johnny had picked up on their way back to base from their latest non-transportation call. Stoker was handling it a little better, and like Kelly, he was still grinning like a banshee. "Tell me that again, Gage. Our machine.. It really worked?" asked Kelly. "Yep. Like a charm." replied Roy. "The cadaver was dead a day and your band machine still started moving every single solitary drop of blood in her." "You mean if she'd been alive, it would have saved her?" asked Chet. "Dr. Brackett seems to think so. Well enough for all practical intent and purposes." Roy nodded. Stoker's eyes bugged out, still tickled pink, and he smacked Chet's arm in celebration. "How about that, Chet? We actually did it!" Gage winked at them. "Even I was impressed." he said. "Well, that's not saying anything." remarked Chet. "It doesn't take that much to ever impress you, Gage. You're such a simpleton." the fireman teased with a straight face. "Yeah.. but I'm such a smart one." Johnny fired back with no sting. "Smart enough to do you a favor by getting Brackett and the hospital administrators to appraise your machine. Aren't Roy and I gonna get some thanks for doing it?" "Thanks, guys." said Stoker. "And I mean that." |
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"You're welcome, Stoker. Thanks for the experience." Johnny smiled, but then he glared at Chet, full guns. "I've never seen anything the like of it before. Not since the birth of plastic bagged D5W." Kelly just chewed his piece of cake, and grinned. "Hmmph.. Like he said.." he mumbled, jerking a thumb at Stoker, spraying crumbs out of his mouth and all over the floor. Bonnie began immediate cleanup detail around his feet. Johnny had to be content with not hearing two certain little words from his cohort. But on this morning of all mornings, it didn't really seem to bother him all that much for once. Cap was just about to comment on how kid-cute-ly the cake had been decorated, when the intercom tones went off. It was for.. ************************************************** From: Patti or Jeff or Cassidy <theaterhost@voyagerliveaction.com> Date: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:40 pm Subject: Trial by Error ...one of the most dreaded calls a fire department could ever hear come into their station. ##Station 51, Station 9, Truck 127, Battalion 1. Foam 110, Station 24. Gas leak at an elementary school. 2780 N. Nellis Blvd. 2780 N. Nellis Blvd. Cross street Arroyo Grande Boulevard. The gas company is reported as having arrived on scene. Time out : 0659.## "10-4. Station 51. KMG 365..." said Cap into the reply radio set into the wall next to the large map of Los Angeles County. Stoker didn't have to trace their route this time. He and the rest of the gang already knew the way. "Roy!" Gage shouted. "Is that the school both of your kids are going to?" "No. They're in another district." DeSoto sighed, rushing into his smoke scented turnout with a speed only a father could accomplish. "Don't tell me we're dealing with M&M Construction again. I thought OSHA shut them down for good last week." he said, waiting for the bay doors to rise high enough to admit them outside. He made his immediate right turn in the squad, squealing a few tires. Behind them, Cap pretended that he didn't notice when the Ward did the same thing, lurching into the fast lane at slightly higher than normal speed. Inside the engine cab, Stoker was grumbling. "It's gotta be those construction crews again. That school's in their territory, Cap. I know the court ordered them to check ahead of time to get the location of any gas lines and display that proof on site before they started any wash grading, but I'm getting one of my little feelings again." Chet smacked a gloved hand against both of their red leathered driving seats. "Stoker, now cut that out. Don't you know that all six of us are in really good moods this morning for once? Now we don't need your natural born precognating juju firing up so soon to spoil it." |
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Marco rubbed his tense face, frowning. He tightened his helmet's chin strap with a nervous grip. "I don't think he's worried about just his own head firing up, Chet." he commented ominously. "That neighborhood's got houses that're really closely packed together." "How could I forget that, pal? We've shown up for every mock evacuation drill that school conducted every spring and fall for the last past five years." snapped Kelly. Hank held up two hands around his seatbelt to get his men to calm down a little bit. "Hush, you two. Let's not count all our possible disasters scenarios before they happen, ok? I for one, am gonna remain strictly optimistic. The wind's not blowing all that bad for us yet." he said, sniffing appreciably at the dew damp sunlit dawn blowing into the cab. "Wait'll the sun gets a little higher..." murmured Chet, settling into his seat glumly as he watched the scenery pass in jerky movements by his window. Unpleasantly overhearing, Stoker upp'ed their siren volume and pushed the safety envelope between them and the speeding rescue squad, letting Roy and Johnny know his change with a few blasts on the airhorn. Squad 51 needed no urging. She leaped ahead, crisscrossing over whole driving lanes as she tracked the shortest possible route through the traffic lights. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Oh, nuts! It IS them.." Cap spat as Stoker brought the engine to a halt the customary two hundred feet away from a danger spot. A backhoe loader surrounded by bright flourescent orange cones was being eerily lit by a roaring plume of invisible natural gas, dust and metallic debris, shooting high into the sky. He sent Marco, and Chet out of the engine to snag out all six of their scba bottles and spares from the squad. Hank rolled up his cab side window. "Stoker. Stay in the engine. We're gonna sweep this block with an evacuation order. Looks like the PD's not here yet to do it themselves." The tight lipped engineer nodded, already turning the huge pumper in a large U'ie in the middle of the road and back towards the downwind direction of houses they had just passed. Already, the mercaptan indicator odor was reaching near choking levels, even in the open air. "They must've hit a 16 inch line or greater this time. I'm seeing the glint of coal tar enamel coating that pipeline." he said, looking through a small set of binoculars."That's got to be at least a 300-pound pressure line that's been severed or I've missed my guess." he told his men with dismay when E-51 had reached her final mid-block position, cock-eyed at an angle to block off curious motorists. |
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Stanley grabbed for the radio cab mic and keyed it up. ## #This is the Los Angeles County Fire Department declaring an evacuation emergency! Leave your homes and classrooms immediately! Move on a route heading north towards 21st Street and Main in the direction of the high school. Do not stop to open any windows and do NOT under any circumstances, turn any appliances, or lights, on or off. Take all ringer phones off their hooks.# ## he added, thinking about electrical sparking and the sheer volume of frantic parent phone calls that would come once the newstrucks starting airing the school's escalating incident. Hank finished his initial recording into the dash tape recorder and looped it into the Ward's P.A. on continuous playback. Then he leaped out of the idling cab to accept the tank an air masked Chet already held out for him. Cap coughed away the rotten egg smell stinging his nostrils, retreating quickly into the cool sanctuary of his flowing faceplate. From the corner of his eye, he could see Station 9 gearing up and reporting their situation to Headquarters and to the white helmeted chief just getting out of his cherry red Chevy. Cap didn't waste any time contributing his own input. Building evacuation was automatically specified in the manual as his station's first course of action due to the intense explosion risks now running. And Hank was truly worried about the clouds threatening to overcast them. He knew the wind would soon pick up then in the canyon and start to blow the escaping gas, both from the severed massive pipeline and venting of the existing line's contents, out of the surrounding homes and school's gas flame interrupted water heaters and furnaces. ::If any air at all snuffed out pilots lights, we could be in for a potential multiple-ignition-point fire four blocks wide. And all it takes for that to happen is one careless cigarette smoker, lighting up.:: he qualmed. It was only a matter of time before the rest of the stinking cloud carried into other buildings by gaps around their outer doors and through the fresh-air intakes on their roof-top HVAC units. Thankfully, Hank was peripherally aware of police and the other assigned fire units conducting rapid traffic control in a very confused intersection down the block from the gas leak's volcano-ing excavation site. He could vaguely see streams of escaping children being helped away by bright vested adult crossing guards and by the police. Stanley knew that it was progressing well because there were few sounds of startled screams cutting through the hissing sound of the rupture belching violently in the ground. Stanley formatted his evacuation plan out loud. "Marco, you're with me. We'll check all the houses on the east end of this block. Roy, Johnny cover the west side.... We're all gonna get people out and look for possible casualties. These fumes are getting real bad. Fast." he shouted, his voice muffled by his air mask. "Search and move together within visual eyesight of each other. And gang. Listen to me closely. Shut your radioes off and keep them that way. The gas pressure inside of any room will be very low, less than 1/2 of a pound per square inch, but spark risks are still very much there. We do have some margin of safety working for us. Natural gas requires a very precise air-to-fuel ratio to allow for any kind of combustion. You'll know when you're in a trouble spot because the smell of it will become unbearably strong just before the atmosphere becomes explosive. People you find in these areas will be very, very sick. Recover them as quickly as possible and get out of there. Don't even stop for a pulse check. There's no time. Is that understood?" All of Stanley's firemen nodded. |
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"Don't use your hand helds until you know you're back out in very, very clear air and use them only if you have to. Get everybody out into the street so they can be evacuated and treated. I'll be watching out for all of ya with constantly updated reports on the leak's repair from the gas company." he said. "Once we're declared population clear, go back over your territory and locate all the meter shut-off valves. For this neighborhood, it's usually the first fitting on the gas supply pipe coming out of the ground near the mint green colored meters round the side of each house. Give a long-handled wrench one-quarter turn in either direction on the valves so that all levers are crosswise to your pipe to reach 'off'. And shut off all stop valves labelled "WOG" behind appliances as you find them." "At least, there's no ignition or explosion yet, Cap." Roy told him, eyeing up the shortest routes that he and his partner would take across the house lawns to reinforce the loud, recycling evacuation announcement. "Believe me, I'm Hail Mary-ing that blessing this morning with the best of em." Cap smirked briefly. "Go. We'll start PPVing classrooms and houses only when the leak's been contained and repairs have begun." Cap said. "If you've finished up your houses, go help pull kids out of the school windows. Looks like they're jamming up the fire doors." Kelly jogged up. "Cap, we've got a few owners who want to go back in to get their pets out." "Where?" asked Hank. He turned around in place with one eye on his two departing coworker pairs and the other he put into the direction Chet was pointing. "At the Promontory Point Apartments over there. Those ugly peach adobe ones located behind the school." Kelly told him. "Too close. Signal the police to tell them 'no' any way they'll take it." Kelly started to jog away when Cap snagged the back of his air tank, and hauled him back around using his greater size. "Ah, ah ah. Tell them from here with a hand gesture because I need you to set up every on-scene truck's medical gear, strong on respiratory equipment. And grab out all our own oxygen supplies." Stanley told him. "We as L.A. County have far more than the non-paramedic stations do. So offer our extras up to any firemen showing up with victims." "Right, Cap..." said Kelly running to the squad and engine to break out their stokes stretcher stores and oxygen apparatuses. He gingerly set metal cases and basket beds down on top of asbetos tarps to prevent any chance of an errant pavement spark happening inside a sudden tendril of migrating invisible gas. ------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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Roy and Johnny began to run for their nearest house, keeping pace with Marco and Hank's progress on the opposite side of the street. They widely circled around the violently hissing pipe hole in the center island's machine graded ditch. DeSoto tapped his partner's shoulder when they reached the first porch. "You know, Any air in that pipe line could allow an explosion if a malfunction in an appliance allows its flame to flash back upstream. They're gonna have to seriously purge that big line once they get it shut off..." Johnny nodded. "Air definitely does not belong in a gas line. But I can think of a worse situation for us to be in. Remember the last gas call involving M & M when they were accidentally flushing the water mains last year using their utility truck?" "Yeah, I remember. They backpumped pure gas into everybody's toilets and garden hoses for not knowing a hydrant's normal water pressure. It's a wonder nobody was killed during that stunt." Roy gasped as they approached a front door. The two paramedics didn't bother to knock. They just entered. By any movement-quiet means possible. "Hey! Is anybody in here?! Fire Department! You gotta get out now. Pipe leak!" they shouted. A sleepy young mother with her baby staggered out of a bedroom. "What?!" Then she started coughing when the sour rotten egg of gas sidled into her open front door. "Oh, no.**choke*" Gage immediately covered the baby's face with an offered air mask and showed the mother out to the safety of the cluster of light flashing fire engines. He choked a few times on the room's gas stench but soon, he was back at Roy's side breathing tanked air. "Any more?" he asked as he saw Roy leaving the mother's back rooms. "No. The rest of the house's empty.." DeSoto whistled through his steaming face plate. "Ok, let's mark this one's main door with a search sticker and move to the next house..." Johnny said, smacking one onto the front door and leaving it conspicuously ajar. As they were leaving for the neighbor's, along the way, Gage overturned a few lawn chairs to clue in other firefighters as to the first house's completed victim search status. |
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Seven minutes later, there was only one house left to check. The one immediately in a direct downwind coming from the rupture. Kelly had taken to following Roy and Johnny along the curb with demand valve cases, staying available for them and offering keen observations for them from the street. He shouted. "There's somebody home over there. A jacuzzi's still on, with a pair of men's shoes around it." Johnny and Roy ran inside the house, tanks clattering. "Check that out, Chet, for anybody blacked and drowning. The fumes are getting really bad over here." Roy said, seeing a couple of dead sparrows on the grass. Kelly dropped his two oyxgen cases to the grass and ran to the house's deck. He grabbed a bird feeder pole out of the ground and used it as a probe, sweeping it from side to side in the steam bubbling tub's water. "It's clear..." he told DeSoto and Gage as they disappeared inside the dwelling. "Ok, we'll be right back!" Johnny shouted to him. Roy did a double take at the family name on the front door. "Did you see that?" he asked his partner. "H--?" Johnny blinked. "I'll check in here, you check down the hallway." Gage said distractedly, looking towards the pine tree shadowed living room. DeSoto wasn't to be denied giving news."Johnny the welcome sign said Brackett! Doesn't he live out this way?" Roy hesitated. "Oh, sh*t.. Uh.... Maybe.." Johnny gasped through his mask. "But doesn't he work today?" "Nah.. it's his weekend. He's still gotta be here. There's a car in the driveway." Roy shouted back. A few tense searching seconds later Gage yelled, pulling Roy away from his own room searching. "Got him...!" Johnny said quickly, seeing a pajama tangled form in a blanket on the couch. |
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A TV set was still on and ironically, it was covering the gas leak incident on the news. "Hey,.. Dr. Brackett?!...Can you hear me?.." he shouted, bending close and shaking a shoulder. But Kel didn't move. "He's unconscious, Roy." "Let's get him outta here..." said DeSoto, grabbing his legs. Johnny got a hold of Brackett's head and armpits and soon, they had him outside. Chet met them both running, and he helped lower the pale doctor to the asphalt. "Holy cow, isn't that---?" "Yes, Chet. It's him. Just shut up and get out the resuscitator. He's getting cyanotic." Gage grunted as he and Roy laid him out onto his back and opened his shirt. All three firefighters ditched their scba gear. For the few moments it took Kelly to get things ready, Johnny did a breathing check after tilting a clear airway on the Rampart doctor. Gage froze, listening and feeling intently. "He's not breathing.." he told them. To save time, Johnny gave Kel two hurried, light breaths, mouth to mouth, to see if he could get a decent chest rise. He did. Then a quick gloveless grope at a cold sweating neck also proved fruitful. "He still has a strong carotid..." Roy and Chet sighed in relief at that finding. "That was close.." Kelly whispered. "Always better half gone than all gone..." Chet quickly took over Kel's care using the thumb trigger valve. "Ok, he's regaining good color, guys." he shared as Roy and Johnny caught their breaths and finished summoning help. "And there's a definite voluntary gasp. I think he's coming around a little already." "Just keep helping him." Johnny directed. "He's not out of the woods yet. Gas suffocation's funny that way." |
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Johnny rose up on his knees to a greater height and horsewhistled, getting Cap's attention to get a couple of firefighters with a empty stokes on the fly so they could get their patient over to the rest of the medical gear and closer to a defibrillator. Hank's face opened in shock at the sight of who they were working on. "Kel Brackett? Is he all right?" He crouched down to be sure Chet was making the proper rate and volume of ventilations around the doctor's own feeble attempts at weak breathing. "He will be. We got to him in time. Nothing that a little epinephrine won't fix." Roy said. "His pulse's still real good." "Where'd you find him?" Hank asked. "On the living room couch." "He a bachelor?" Cap asked, wondering. "Yeah. He lives alone.." DeSoto replied, fully expecting the question. "All right. Move him out, boys." ordered Cap to the firefighters he had brought with him. Before they got even halfway to Chet's cache of waiting medical equipment, Brackett came to and began to struggle, almost worming his way out of the stokes he was being carried in. The firemen lowered him to the street in a controlled drop before he could fall and hurt himself. "Doc! Doc! It's Johnny Gage. Take it easy. You're doing fine." Johnny said, taking hold of a bleary eyed, now coughing Kel, by his shock dampened shoulders. "Here. Breathe in more of this oxygen we're giving ya. You weren't doing it so hot a moment ago..." Kel twisted up and choked, turning red, as huge coughs finally cleared the rest of his chest free of the burning smell of gas. Then he relaxed physically. But mentally, he was very agitated. They all watched worriedly as he grabbed his T-shirt in a powerful grip. "What's the matter?" Roy asked him. "Does your chest hurt?" Kel took another breath of oxygen from the offering mask. Then he began to fight it, actively pushing it away. "D-D-D-....." he stuttered, shivering in a sweat chill. A firefighter covered him with a yellow sheet, thinking that was his complaint. Johnny leaned in closer, thinking he heard something different. "What was that? Can you say that again?" Brackett's face contorted.. "...dixie.." he moaned, wincing. The paramedics misunderstood. "Dixie? Easy, doc. Yeah, don't worry. We'll call her just as soon as we've stabilized your vital s---" DeSoto started to say. Kel caught his collar in a death grip. "Go..get her out! Came home with me.." he whispered painfully as he tried to struggle to full awareness. Then he let go, his head falling to one side into a lapse of returned breathing difficulty. Chet's face paled. "Oh, ...no ..way...." Kelly gaped in disbelief, eyes sliding back to the silent, white porched house. Hank was iron. "Kelly. Go check it out with your air on. Check out the bedrooms first. I'll take over here." Cap said, starting to ventilate Brackett once more when his chest failed to move well enough for him. Chet ran. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kelly got into the house. "Dixie!" he shouted. His breaths whistled loudly in his mask as he quickly searched for a direction in which to head. Then he saw a baby blue glow coming from the bathroom stabbing into the room that was its opposite. The new sun's dappling light was illuminating a fallen pillow on the carpeting. "Bet she's in there.." he mumbled to himself. "Probably knocked it down trying to get out of the room." He found Dixie sideways on the bed, nearly hidden by sheets. She was in a one piece swimsuit and still wearing rubber sandals. "Gone to sleep after hot tubbing it, huh? Well, getting gassed by a neighbor isn't exactly what I call the nicest way to unwind. Not by a long shot." Chet told her coughing, half out form as he hauled her up and hung her face down into the perch between his air bottle and a turncoated shoulder. |
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Dixie groaned at the jarring disturbance. "Easy, Dixie. I got you." Kelly said, making tracks for the front door. "Just keep breathing.." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Twin sounds of demand valve ventilations punctuated the air around the fire department broadcasts near the high school. Roy and Johnny were just beginning to treat their current and past bosses when a young student wandered up from the other kids still in the group awaiting buses that would take them safely back home for the day. "Hey, are those people going to be ok?" asked the little girl as she looked down as Stoker and Marco lightly aided the nurse and doctor's shallow respirations. DeSoto smiled as he adjusted an EKG reading on a yellow shock sheet blanketed Dixie. "They sure will. All that escaping gas's just made them a little sleepy. Don't worry. Those oxygen masks will help them wake up from their naps in a couple minutes." he promised. "Good." said the little girl, satisfied. "I'm glad. I didn't think there was anything you guys couldn't do.." she told them matter of factly. |
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Hank started chuckling. "Huh, what a concept." Then he asked the child. "Who put that thought in your head this morning, young miss?" "My teacher." she replied, thoughtfully chewing on a ponytail. The firemen looked polite and didn't comment on that further like nice little firefighters, while they quietly worked to ready Dixie and Kel for a code three transportation to Rampart. The happy girl shared more. "Didn't you know? You're famous. That day we played together got on the news. And today, my teacher says the reporters are all calling your Station 51, the house of the Water Day Saints on TV." she said proudly. "Well, how about that gang?" Stanley grinned. "Tops even that cake we still have sitting out, getting stale, in the kitchen." FIN Water Day Saints, Episode Thirty Two Emergency Theater Live ------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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