Gaurdian Angels and the Grace of God

Those two forces, my friends, were working overtime Wednesday night.
Here is the story as determined by the Fire Investigators.

At 1530 on 8/2, lightning struck the house. It caused a smouldering fire in a crawl space. The lightning also caused a propane leak in the basement. As we all know, propane is heavier than air and seeks out the lowest point, in this case, the basement. Since propane settles, if it has had enough time to settle, there won't be much of a smell if it's enclosed. Getting off track though.

The homeowner got home around 1900, found her house full of smoke, went to the neighbors house and called 911.

My FD was activated, along with our neighbors to the west (Station 8) and the north(Station 29). When they got on scene, they were faced with a 2 story colonial with a smoke condition in the house. As a side note, the homeowners were putting up a stone facade on the house. The FD investigated, could not find any active fire. They went to the TIC (thermal imaging camera) and found the fire in the crawlspace. One crew went outside and started removing a few rocks from the wall to access the crawlspace from the outside and another crew went inside with saws and PPV (positive pressure ventilation) fans. When access was gained, a cellar nozzle was inserted into the crawlspace. (A cellar nozzle is a ball shaped nozzle with multiple orifices pointing in multiple directions.. a hole is cut in the floor and the nozzle is hooked up to a 2 1/2" line, then lowered into the cellar. When water flows, the head of the nozzle starts spinning, sending large amounts of water in all directions. It is a very effective tool for fighting cellar fires and it saves you from having to send firefighters into the burning basement, which is about the worse place you can be on a fireground.) As far as the investigators can tell, when the cellar nozzle was charged, it introduced a lot of air to the fire as well as stirring the prementioned pooled propane. As we all know, Fire+Air+Large amounts of Propane= BOOM.

And that's exactly what happened. There were several (6+) Firefighters inside when the house exploded. The stone facade blew off the side of the house, landing on the deputy chief from Station 29, buring him up to his chest in stone. Originally, the docs thought he fractured his spine, but upon further review they decided that he exacerbated an old injury and also injured his leg. The chief from Station 29 got 1st and 2nd degree burns to his face and hands and also reportedly caught a PPV fan with his head (reports say the ppv fan has the shape of his helmet on the cowling). Another assistant chief from the Station 29 broke his leg and i don't know about burns on him. In all, 5 ppl from Station 29 got transported.

In my Dept., my Deputy chief got 1st degree burns to his face and 2nd degree burns to his hands, as did my Captain. I believe my captain got it a little worse than the deputy chief because the captain's mask got knocked off in the explosion. Another of our firefighters went to the hospital for eval due to some transient deafness. He was treated and released quickly.

Our neighbors to the west (Station 8) had 4 FF's injured. The chief had burns to the face, head, and hands as well, i believe. I'm not sure about the other 3's injuries, but i believe they were burns, bumps, and bruises.

Come to find out, the neighbors later told crews that the propane tank "Had been making a funny noise" earlier (after the lightning strike and before the 911 call), so they shut it off. The tank itself was some distance from the house (100' or so from what i was told).

The fact that no one died is nothing short of a miracle, nothing less than divine intervention. The fact that the most severe burns were 2nd degree is a miracle in and of itself! If the wall had fallen on anyone other than the Deputy chief from Station 29, it would have killed or seriously injured them. The DC is about 6'5" and built solid. He's a foreman for a construction company, so he's got many years of hard work behind him. His build saved him, along with the grace of God.

Everyone is already home for the hospital, which is great. That means no one was burnt bad enough to need the Burn Unit. Only 4 or 5 out of the 12 spent the night at the hospital.

I got to the station around 0300 and the assistance was already pouring in. The farthest dept to the Northwest end of our county (Station 26) was at our station, with a crew and an engine on standby. We are the farthest dept. to the Southeast. Last night, the farthest in-county dept. to the north of us (Station 24) was on standby at our station with an engine and a squad. Station 29 has departments from the far west of the county (Stations 27 and 15, among others) on standby for them. It's amazing. There was even a firefighter from one of the paid depts to the southeast of us (about 25-30 miles SE, 2 counties away) at our station standing by. Thursday morning, we had 2-3 news stations out front with their communications masts up in the air, reporters everywhere. it was crazy.

I got a chance to see the house that morning when we got called up there to extinguish a hot spot. I couldn't believe how blessed we were that no one died when I saw that house and also the rock pile the 29's DC got buried in. Completely amazing.

My chief is still really shaken. He has an extensive fire intruction/training, prevention, and investigation background. He's on the NFPA Advisory Boards, all sorts of stuff. And he is really shook up and torn up over this. He's the type who will spend every idle moment picking the whole scenario apart trying to find what went wrong and what could have been different, and beating himself up over anything he can think may have been done differently. So i do hope he can rest easy. The investigators determined that he and the rest of the crews did everything right with the information they had and nothing could have been done differently unless someone could have seen into the future.

For those of you who offered up prayers, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You.
God was watching over Station 4 (my dept) and everyone else present that night.
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In other news, paramedic class is almost over. I have 2 more rides with my preceptor and 2 more ER rotations and i am done with clinicals/field time.
Our PSE is the 12th (!!!!!!!!!!) and our state written is the 17th. Time to start brushing up and preparing. Paramedic, here I come!

Have a great night, and thanks again