being a retained FireFighter in Suffolk
Blanket Coverage at RTC in Lowestoft
Firstly, apologies for the delay in posting about this RTC. It happened over a week ago but, what with one thing and another, I never got round to tapping away on the old keyboard.
Anyway…
Last Saturday evening I had just about managed to stay awake through the latest Indiana Jones film only in the vain hope that a bloody big marble would roll down a cobweb shrouded tunnel and run poor old Harrison Ford over… Sadly, I didn’t make it and was woken from my slumbers by my little black number – that’s my alerter and not the little black number that I wear on special occasions and at weekends (joking, honest!).
Over at the fire station and it’s a full house of lights up – the ERT (NT06) is already gone with the Watch onboard, next to go will be Ladder 1 (NT01) and finally Ladder 2 (NT02).
The incident is barely a mile from the station, single vehicle totally demolished a section of 6 foot high wall before ending up across the road.
The car is stabilised, glass managed and an equipment dump set up. While the cutting starts I put back an informative message to our Control and ask for an ETA of the ambulance. The reply is that they are attending from Southwold, about 15 miles away!
Once they’ve arrived and the paramedic is happy, the roof comes off and the young lady is removed on the long board. While being assessed on the ambulance trolley one of the firefighters covers the casualty with one of our ancient grey blankets. She is then wheeled away to the waiting ambulance.
Then its packing all the gear up and also time to retrieve our blanket. The following conversation is real and I can only assume that the ambulance technician is very new or, indeed, still in training:
Firefighter (after knocking politely on the ambulance door): Could we have our grey blanket back please?
Technician: We’re using it.
Firefighter: Could you not swap it for one of yours?
Technician: But we don’t carry grey blankets.
Firefighter: What have you got then?
Technician: Just these white hospital blankets…
Firefighter: Any chance of swapping our grey blanket for one of those then?
Hmm…
– IAN CARTER (www.accessiblewebsites.co.uk)
