The theme for this year's Fire Prevention Weeks is "Smoke alarms: Make them work for you". Which sound like a great idea, but then you have to pay them, and send W-2 forms, and it would mess up your taxes ...

In any case, here's the link to the National Fire Prevention Association's info on the subject:

https://www.nfpa.org/events/fire-prevention-week

  During my four decades in the emergency services, I never heard anyone complain that their smoke detectors worked properly. Well, okay, once—but that guy was an arsonist.
Fire Prevention Week this year is October 6-12, mostly because nothing else goes on in mid-October. No, actually it was because the Great Chicago Fire happened on October 9, 1871. That fire destroyed more than 17,400 structures and killed at least 250 people, and might have been prevented if Mrs. O’Leary had installed a smoke detector in her barn. Have you ever seen a cow remove a smoke detector battery? Me neither.
Nobody really knows what started the Great Chicago Fire, so the dairy industry has a real beef with blaming the cow, which legend says knocked over a lamp. Does the lamp industry ever get the blame? Noooo....
 
Cow or lamp? Trick question: It's a training session, so firefighters.

 
At about the same time the Peshtigo Fire burned across Wisconsin, killing 1,152 people and burning 16 entire towns. Several fires burned across Michigan and Wisconsin at the time, causing some to speculate that a meteor shower might have caused the conflagration. There may have been shooting stars elsewhere, but Chicago got all the press.
This year’s Fire Prevention Week theme is "Smoke alarms: Make them work for you!" It's not like they're going to be busy elsewhere.
Just as you should change your smoke detector batteries every fall and spring, you should replace your smoke alarm every ten years. Doing the same to your carbon monoxide detector is a great idea, so it can make a sound to warn about the gas that never makes a sound.
This is great advice, and as I hadn’t given much thought to the age of my own smoke detectors, I took it. The one in the basement stairway said: “Manufactured 1888 by the Tesla Fire Alarm Co.”
Not a good sign.
The one in the kitchen hallway said simply: “Smoke alarm. Patent pending.”
Oh boy.
So check them. Do it right now, so they're working for you. I know it doesn’t have quite the pizzazz of the 1942 Fire Prevention Week theme: “Every Fire Helps Hitler”.
 
But hey … you can’t blame the Nazis for everything.



 

 

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Remember: Books are flammable, so keep them protected. Especially my books.

If it seems like I'm just copying and pasting last year's blog about the AFD fish fry, it's because a book deadline has me in its clutches, and I am. The info is updated, though.

 

If you should be near Albion during the Chain O’ Lakes Festival, don’t forget to drop in on the fish and tenderloin fry at the fire station Wednesday, June 5th. This has been an annual tradition for many decades, with proceeds going to equipment and training for the Albion Fire Department. (Indiana, for those of you near other Albions.)

It’s from 4:30-7:00 p.m., with a price of $14 for adults and $10 for children 8 and under, and it’s darned good food for a good cause. I should know, having eaten it almost every year for ... a long time. The AFD is at 210 Fire Station Drive, on the east end of town.  (It's traditional, when a town has a Fire Station Drive, to build the fire station there.)
Donations to the department get us all sorts of stuff, much of which helps keep us alive.    

 

 


Meanwhile, don't forget to pick up a copy of Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights, the Albion Fire Department's history book, which goes for just $9.95. Come on, you know you want to donate that extra nickle. It took me 25 years to write!

Okay, so I wasn't writing the entire 25 years.

 


 

 

 

Remember: Every time you buy a history book, a dusty old professor gets his wings.

            It goes without saying that the best way to maintain safety in a kitchen is to keep me out.

            But I said it anyway, and as it happens, the theme of this year’s Fire Prevention Week is "Cooking Safety Starts With YOU". Even a group of Congressmen couldn’t argue over whether that’s a good idea. Could they?
 
            “My esteemed colleague doesn’t seem to understand that if all fires were prevented, it would mean unemployment for untold numbers of construction crews and emergency room workers!”
 
            Yeah, I guess they could.
 
            The National Fire Protection Association decides themes for this important week, and they chose wisely. If only they chose wisely in naming their mascot, a huge and overly caffeinated-looking dog named Sparky.
 
            We don’t want sparks. Sparks are bad, except when lighting campfires, or igniting homemade cannons to flatten aliens. (It worked for James T. Kirk.)
 
 
Shouldn’t the NFPA’s mascot be named Soggy? Or is that for nightmare scenarios involving puppy training?
 
            In our house the kitchen is safe as long as I don't cook; when I do, food poisoning takes the number one danger spot. Instead, my wife cooks while I do the dishes, which seems fair. No one has ever started a fire while doing dishes, although I did electrocute myself that way, once. Okay, twice.
 
            Long story.
 
            Kitchen fires are common because that’s where the fire is. Whether you use electric or gas, stuff gets hot, and hot is dangerous. When fires start people panic, doing such things as pouring water on grease fires—because it’s the kitchen, and there’s water right there, after all.
 
            Here are other things people do wrong, when it comes to cooking:
 
            They leave.
 
            Leaving is bad. Unattended fires rarely have anyone attending them. Most stove fires I responded to as a firefighter were unattended, and even if the flames don’t spread beyond the pan, let me assure you: The smell is horrible.
 
            They fall asleep.
 
            Dude, if you’re that tired, sleep now—have breakfast later.
 
Or better yet, stop out at the Albion Fire Station this coming Saturday and have someone else cook your breakfast.

 
 
            They drink.
 
            Cooking sherry is for cooking. If you’re consuming alcoholic beverages, you should do pretty much nothing else, except maybe watch football or take a nap. Or take a nap while watching football—set an alarm for the halftime show.
 
            They put flammable stuff on the stove.
 
            I have a big plastic bowl with a very odd design on the bottom. Kind of dents, in a circular pattern. In fact, it’s the exact same pattern you’ll find on the top of my gas stove if, say, you turned off the flames but didn’t wait for the stove to cool down before you set a big plastic bowl on it.
 
            On any given day, somebody’s stove will have on it an oven mitt, wooden spoon, cardboard food box, or towel. Last year, 172,100 structure fires started with cooking. Total fire damage in the USA was 15.9 billion dollars. And you know what the worst part of a kitchen fire is? When it’s over …
 
            You’ll still be hungry.
 
            Two thirds of cooking fires start when food itself ignites, which kinda makes sense, and see above about how horrible it smells. Scorched beans and corn especially stink, for some reason. More than half of the injuries come when people try to fight the fires.
 
 

 
            Can you fight kitchen fires? Sure, after you call 911 (they’ll wisely tell you to leave), but you’re taking your chances. If you happen to be right there when something in a pan catches, just turn off the heat and drop a lid on it, suffocating the fire.
 
            But a lot of people don’t do that. In a panic, they’ll splash water on the fire, which will cause grease and oil to splatter and spread the fire further. Don’t do that.
 
            Better idea: Have a fire extinguisher and know how to use it. In my novel Radio Red, a panicked character tries to read the directions on an extinguisher after a fire breaks out. That’s a poor time to take a class, people. (And why haven’t you read that book?)
 
            Read the directions and take a class, so if the fire’s small you can stand with your back to an exit, discharge the extinguisher at the base of the fire, then get the heck outside, all after you dialed 911. Do I sound too cautious? Well, the National Safety Council says 3,800 American civilians died in fires last year, with 14,700 more injured. Do I still sound too cautious?
 
            That’s just a quick overview of the dangers, and what you can do about them. Oh, and one more thing: Thanksgiving is the number one day for home cooking fires, so have your relatives bring food.
 
            Then you can stay out of the kitchen, and enjoy your nap during the football game.
 
 
 
 
 
Remember, every time you prevent a fire, a book is safe from burning.

 April has sucked royally thus far, and I haven't felt very funny (as opposed to not being funny and thinking I am). So I'm celebrating National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week the way they used to do summer television: With a re-run.)
 



I've been taking 911 calls for so long that they were originally 91 calls.

Well, it seems that way. It turns out National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week predates my full-time employment in the emergency services by ten years, and can we possibly shorten that name down a bit? By the time I finish saying the title, the week is over. I'm going to call it ... NPSTW. I know somebody who got their Bachelor Degree at NPSTW, although they've since married. Go Bulldogs!

Anyway, I started with the Noble County EMS as a seventeen year old trainee in late 1979, and joined our volunteer fire department on my birthday in 1980. But it wasn't until December, 1991, that I took an actual paying job in that area, as a jail officer with the Noble County Sheriff Department.

Within a few years I got tired of getting sick all the time. Seriously: Those inmates breathed so many germs on me, I thought I was in a sequel to The Andromeda Strain. So I went into dispatch, trading physical ailments for mental ones.

 

 Unknown to me, way back in 1981 Patricia Anderson, of the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office in California, came up with this idea to give tribute to, um, NPST, or as I'm going to call them, dispatchers. Yes, I know "dispatchers" doesn't tell the whole story, but my typing fingers are tired.

I've been here--let me update--about 32 years, and dispatched for most of those. So long that when I started we had only one computer, to get information such as license plate and driver's license returns, using DOS.

Get your grandparents to explain DOS to you.

My wife points out that back then we received 911 calls by smoke signal, while carving notes onto stone tablets. I'm fairly sure she was kidding.

I've been here so long I could retire. Full retirement pay! Sadly, I haven't figured out how to make up  for insurance and the difference in income, but I'm hoping my book sales will pick up. (Note: They have, but not enough.) Also, it would be tough learning to sleep through the night.

Things really were easier back then, when it comes to learning the job. Our computer systems do make it easier to help people these days, but astronauts don't train as much as our rookies do. Spaceship vehicle pursuits are faster, though. The truth is, I'm not sure I could make it through training, if I started today.

Instead of one small computer screen,  I'm looking at seven flat screen monitors, not including the security and weather screens. Our report was written (in pen) on a piece of paper about half the size of a standard sheet. Today we have a Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD), radio screen, phone screen, mapping screen, recorder screen, 911 texting screen, and a screen to keep track of everyone's duty status. We also have a screen to keep track of screens. Those are just the ones we use regularly.

I found this waiting for me when I got into work Monday. They get me.
 
 
I'm pretty burned out at this point, and some of our calls can get rough. I have all the symptoms of PTSD; some of them include:

Experiencing a life-threatening event, like when the dispatch pop machine ran out of Mountain Dew;
Flashbacks and nightmares, such as reliving the night we ran out of Mountain Dew;
Avoidance, such as staying away from places that don't have ... well, you know.
Depression or irritability, which I just now realized might be related to consuming too much caffeine;
Chronic pain ... wow, that one hit me like a pulled back muscle.

I checked off each and every box: avoidance, numbing, flashbacks, being on edge, overeating ... HEY! Who the HECK took my meatball sub out of the break room fridge! I'm HUNGRY!

Where was I? Oh, yeah:

Why the heck am I still here?

Here's the thing. I've worked in retail; in factories; as a security guard and jail officer; as a radio DJ; I once made two bucks an hour growing worms for fishing lure. And for all the emotional turmoil, all the mental stress, all the physical ailments, all the days when I wanted to scream, and so desperately wanted to NOT go back into work the next shift ...

Dispatching is still the best full time job I've ever had.

Of course, I'm not a full time writer, yet. For that I'd only have to deal with one computer screen.

Wait, am I seriously the only male who works here? Anyway, thank you to the Town of Albion for the thank you.
 


http://markrhunter.com/
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https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

 

 

Pretty much everyone who reads my blog or other social media realizes by now that I’m a humorist. Some of you might even think I’m funny. I poke fun at serious things all the time, and I even write humor pieces about deadly serious stuff, such as Fire Prevention Week.

 

But that doesn’t mean it’s not a serious subject.

This year the National Fire Protection Association picked: “Fire Won’t Wait. Plan Your Escape” as the theme for the week, which runs from October 9 to 15. In my experience, when a fire starts it doesn’t want to just be there, waiting for a food delivery or an Uber ride. It likes to spread—and it spreads fast.

Thanks to modern building materials, once a building catches fire the flames spread way more quickly than they once did, and the fires burn hotter. The third best way to combat that is to be in a building that has a fire sprinkler system, an idea that has no interest to politicians or the construction industry. The second best way is to have operating smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, along with a plan for what to do if a fire breaks out.

(The first way, of course, is to use caution and prevent a fire from breaking out in the first place.)

 


 

 

Feel safe in your home? 74% of all fire deaths in the United States happen in those homes. People are actually more likely to die in a home fire today than they were in 1980, the year I started in the fire service. So the message is simple: Be ready to get out. The NFPA has some tips on getting out alive:

  • Make sure your home escape plan meets the needs of all your family members, including those with sensory or physical disabilities.
  • Smoke alarms should be installed inside every sleeping room, outside each separate sleeping area, and on every level of your home. Smoke alarms should be interconnected so when one sounds, they all sound.
  • Know at least two ways out of every room, if possible. Make sure all doors and windows open easily.
  • Have an outside meeting place a safe distance from your home where everyone should meet.
  • Practice your home fire drill at least twice a year with everyone in the household, including guests. Practice at least once during the day and at night.

Fire Prevention Week is the longest running public health observance, marking its hundredth anniversary this year. Everybody involved wishes it wasn’t necessary.

 

 


 Find our books at:

 

 

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

And check out the Albion Fire Department's history in Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights: A Century Or So With the Albion Fire Department.

 

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