Mar 10, 2009

"BURN DOWN THE DISCO"

I was on-call this morning with an organization for which I am now doing volunteer disaster response. I hung out at home, took one of the online refreshers to keep my head on the task at hand, drank coffee, caught up on email, yadda yadda. Towards the end of my brief shift, we were called to a fire in Englewood. So, my co-responders, a former paratrooper-turned public transportation bureau planner who is now completely retired, and a skrink, and I piled into the truck and went. We arrived only to find the trip unnecessary; it was a foreclosed, and thus now-empty, house which had become a crack den. Apparently, the couch was set afire and shoved out a window, which only made matters worse and spread the fire around, the crackheads scattered at the first sign of an emergency vehicle, and so... a whole lot about very little.

Lessons learned:

I will drink less coffee on on-call days: Not a fun predicament, having to pee when the opportunity to do so does not exist in the least.

Though many responders aren't fans, the board-up guys seem to know who is who and what is what really well at the scene of a fire, and aren't afraid to say so.

Regardles of what a Google Maps print-out may say, a former public transportation employee knows a better way and has nothing but scorn for Google Maps and their mainstream, uncreative routes. Nothing. But. Scorn.

3 comments:

Joe said...

Brilliant! Good job, too. I want to hear more about this. And I'm pleased to see you learned the coffee rule without too much misery or embarrassment. Remind me to tell you the bank robbery standoff/horrible need to pee story.

allisonluth34 said...

Hey, Amy! I'm curious as to how you were trained to do disaster relief. Its always been something I've wanted to do and have looked into in the past. Did you do training classes through a local program or national? If you have any good info for me, let me know!

Amy Guth said...

Email me and I'll tell you the whole scoop, Al.