I was just sitting down with a weary groan after a big morning of fence building when we got a fire callout - I'm amazed at how fast I'm getting at making it to the brigade. The way it works is we get a text message from headquarters giving the details and we race up to the station, where we're into our gear and rolling out in the truck within a couple of minutes.
I could see billowing smoke coming from the back of the bakery up by the creek. Gary, Greg, Tyler and Ben all arrived at the station at about the same time I did and we raced off in both vehicles, sirens going (yahoo! except of course we're not allowed to say that).
Kids had set fire to the scrub behind the bakery; fortunately we've just had a fair bit of rain so it wasn't going off at a hundred miles an hour. I'm proud to say I managed to remember my training and leaped into action with Invisible Gordon shouting in my mind. Gary handed me the rollout hose from the big truck and sent me to the top ridge area while Greg and Tyler covered the creek. Gary went down with the rakehoe to pull apart smouldering clumps while I aimed the hose at the burning sections coming apart.
There was a lot of smoke, so we kept moving around to stay out of it. It took about fifteen minutes to put it out, then we waited for a bit to make sure there were no flareups, then packed up with lots of the usual "hose" jokes (sadly, we never get tired of them; I am the worst offender).
So there you go, my first real callout, side by side with my bloke, fightin' fires! I love this life!
Except I think I've just burnt the dinner.
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