I heard some folks talking about a fire that had recently occurred in a fire station, and I thought that I would share a perspective that many do not think about. The bottom line is that it can happen, and does happen more than people know. I am not going to talk about the fire that occurs when a piece of fire apparatus or a piece of power equipment catches fire, while in the building. I also will not be talking about the fire that occurs when a motor seizes up. The fire that I am going to talk about happens numerous times all around the country. Cooking-related fires account for 3.7 out of every 10 residential fires, and I would venture to say, if the truth be known, is the cause of most cases of fire stations that catch fire, if reported. You might say: How does a fire start in a place that houses the people that will come to my house when my house or my business catches on fire? The answer is relatively simple, and that is that firefighters, at all stages of meal preparation, or when trying to eat their meals, get dispatched to calls for service and away they go. The human factor that leads to the fire in your kitchen is the same human factor that could cause someone to forget to ensure that the oven and every burner are shut off before leaving to help someone in need.
I cannot tell you the number of times when I was on my engine or my ladder truck, or serving as the Tactical Safety Officer that I received a call to go to another station and check the stove. I also cannot tell you the number of times that we asked someone to do the same for us. I can remember a few occasions when we returned to an older station and the smoke would be banked down to the floor. The blessing and curse of the most recent fire was that it set off the suppression system as well as the fire alarm system. The blessing was that the system did what it was designed to do, activating due to a fire and putting the fire out, with much less damage than if a system were not present. The curse was that some fire officer had to try to explain things to his or her battalion chief. It reminds me of the conversation that I had to have with my BC when we checked up short with the aerial and were unable to accomplish our assigned task at a family night with a bleacher full of spectators including five or more chiefs. I know, you are saying that it is not the same thing. Well, how about the call that had to be made to the chief of a prominent department in the west? During some type of maintenance on a piece of apparatus, with the unit throttled up from the pump panel throttle, the story goes that the fire unit went into gear and rolled down the street, hitting everything in its path. The story also included the dispatcher calling the chief and telling him to call that station. The chief asked the dispatcher what the problem was, and the dispatcher said, “Chief, you don’t pay me enough to tell you this one.” As Graham used to always say, “You can’t write this stuff!” In other words, no one would every believe it if you told them.
Back to the cooking-related fire that set off the suppression system I pose this question: Why have we not come up with some type of system that cuts the stove and oven off when the alarm is activated? Smoke alarms and fire suppression systems are great for what they are designed to do and that is activate once a fire occurs. In other words, these are systems that are designed to react to a fire. Why not create something that prevents the fire from ever occurring? Some might say that the low frequency of these fires would not make it worth the financial costs. I bet, if you asked the firefighters on the affected shift or the firefighters who work at that station, then they would say that it was worth the costs if something like that existed.
It is easy to ask how could that happen if you have never worked in a world where you could catch a fire or medical call at any moment of any shift. You might have just walked into the station, you might be in the shower after PT, you might be headed to the bathroom, you might be – pre-COVID – giving a tour of your station, you might be restocking or cleaning up after a bad call, you might be trying to eat your first meal at 3 p.m. because you have not stopped running calls from the moment you walked in the door, and yes, you might be trying to prepare a meal when the tones go off. I will leave you with this Christmas story from Fire Station 1 in Chester. We had invited our families to join us for dinner. We fixed seafood, steak, and every trimming that you could think of. We were just about to sit down to eat and we got knocked out for a house fire. Needless to say, our families ate their meals, cleaned up afterwards, and were long gone before we got back. It happens because that is what firefighters do. To every firefighter that has to work when everyone else is home enjoying their families, God bless you, and know that we appreciate you and your sacrifice. To the fire officer and shift that had to sit down with their BC and try to explain how the station caught fire, I feel your pain and just know: This too will pass.
