Me, Bucky and a Standby Crew

Bishop Fire Dept had a well-established rule that rookies of 2 years or less could not ride on the first responding engine unless he was the third man. The logic being that the engineer had to run the pump upon arrival and if you were the only other first responder you should have more than 2 years experience and know what hose to deploy and how to do it effectively and safely.

This rule applied to both Standby Crews and a full response fire alarm. Let me explain the difference. 9 times out of 10 our pagers would go off and we would respond Code 3, full lights and siren, to the scene. Other times we would be asked to send a “standby crew”, which meant send one or 2 trucks to help out with a situation or to check out a situation further pending a full response. We would drive the speed limit and not use any lights or sirens to respond to a standby call. Examples of a standby crew call would be to help free a horse whose foot had gotten stuck inside a cattle gate, or maybe to a small brush fire the size of a bathroom that had no chance of spreading.

This particular day in 1985 our pagers went off, “Attention Bishop Volunteers, Attention Bishop Volunteers, please send a standby crew to the 2900 block of Mesquite Drive to check a report of an electrical smell”. I responded, as did others, to Station 1 and Jeff “Bucky” Stewart was firing up Engine 10. Bucky was always excitable and did all but order me into Engine 10. He wanted to get going and didn’t want to wait. I reminded him that I was a rookie and shouldn’t respond in Engine 10, to which he replied, “it’s only a standby call…get in”.

We headed west on W. Line Street and less than a block later our pagers went off again. “Attention Bishop Volunteers, callers report a heavy electrical smell.” We continued on and once more our pagers went off 2 blocks later, “Attention Bishop Volunteers, we now have a report of smoke coming from electrical sockets”. As we debated whether we should hit the lights and siren our pagers went off a third time in less than 5 blocks, “Attention Bishop Volunteers, this is now a possible structure fire”.

By this time I realized someone was going to have a word with me about why I was on Engine 10 as a rookie. I was getting more nervous and our pagers went off one last time, Attention Bishop Volunteers, attention Bishop Volunteers, we have a fully involved structure fire, please respond full Code”.

We were at the intersection of W. Line and Home Street, a distance of only 7 blocks from the firehouse and this call had escalated from a standby call to a fully involved structure fire. Amazing! I looked at Bucky and wondered what he had gotten me into.

We arrived on scene to find the fire was contained in the garage, but it was ‘burning good” as we used to say. As Bucky put the PTO in gear and started the pump I pulled the 1 ½" line off the middle compartment and stretched it toward the garage. We carried about 400 gallons, our pump at full capacity would deliver 150 gallons per minutes; so that meant that I had just under 3 minutes to get a handle on this fire all the time praying that Engine 4 would be right behind us.

Well, we did a good job that day. We managed to knock the fire down enough for Engine 4 to come in and complete the mop up with its payload. The assistant Fire Chief, Stan Lloyd came up to me and complimented my efforts, turned to walk away and then paused. He looked up and said don’t get yourself in that situation again, Perkins.