Ride Along with Sac. Metro Fire District

Engine 109 carries a 700-gallon tank of water in its belly and an array of hoses up on top. Fire axes, ventilation hooks, and orange cones line the outer storage compartments. The passenger area is stocked with an ample supply of medical gloves. The engine has four doors and four seats: one for each of the firefighters, and an additional seat for the rare ride-along guest.

This morning, that guest is me. From 9 a.m. to noon, I'm riding along with firefighters from Station 109, the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District's Carmichael station.

It's about 9:45 am. My liability waiver is signed, an "EMS Ride-along" badge is fastened to my sweater, and I'm in the station garage, walking a slow circle around the fire engine as Capt. Dave Smith gives me a tour of my ride for the morning.

“Right here is where you sit," Capt. Smith says, pointing to a small fold-down seat behind the engine driver.

The driver is Engineer Brian Barthel. Smith rides shotgun, and behind the captain is Firefighter Andy Whaley.

"We don’t want to be waiting for you if something happens," warns the captain, with a skeptical glance at my high heels. "So get on here before we do. We just don’t know what’s going to happen today. Maybe nothing. Or maybe it'll be the most serious thing you’ve seen in your life and you’ll go outside and vomit.”

With that, the station alarm sounds.

First Call

Within minutes, I am rattling around inside the fire engine as it screams down Fair Oaks Boulevard, sirens on.

The patient, a 62-year old woman with a blood sugar spike, is sagging in an armchair in her living room. The room is instantly busy.

Whaley pumps up a blood pressure cuff, listens to the patient's pulse, and takes an oxygen reading. Meanwhile, Barthel asks the patient a series of questions, and off to one side, Smith interviews her son.

"Do you take insulin?" Barthel is asking.

"What's her name?" The captain is jotting notes on a clipboard. "Date of birth?"

"Do you have any pain anywhere?" Barthel continues. "Any discomfort?"

“Look at Brian as the doctor,” Smith explains later. "He’s the highest medical authority, because he’s a paramedic. He’s putting the picture together for what’s going on here. That way he can tell the next paramedic on the ambulance and the next paramedic can tell the doctor.”

The entire process lasts about ten minutes. The ambulance arrives to transport the patient to a hospital. As we leave, the paramedics are lifting the patient to her feet and helping her to the door, where a few drops of rain are just starting to fall on the waiting stretcher.

Level Two Hazmat

Next up is a drill. Several fire stations are participating in a mock fire attack at an apartment complex on Marconi Avenue. We're nearing the destination when the dispatch radio chirps.

No drill today after all.

"We're headed to Cordova," Smith announces.

Rancho Cordova is a fair distance from Carmichael, but it's the location of the Franchise Tax Board building, where a suspicious flammable-gas odor has triggered the evacuation of 40 employees. Twenty people are sick, and emergency crew are transporting several of them for medical care.

This is a "hazmat," a hazardous materials incident, and it's now being classified as a "level two hazmat."

"Level one," Smith explains later, “would be something that a fire engine could take care of. Level two requires a specialty rig - a hazmat."

And Station 109 has the Hazmat.

“There's only one hazardous material rig in our entire department of forty engines," Smith says. “So if there’s a hazardous materials incident anywhere in the neighboring areas, Station 109 responds. We go as a team.”

"I hope you didn't have anything planned for the next several hours," the captain says to me over his shoulder. "This is a pretty big incident. It'll be on the news."

This prediction turns out to be true, although the story takes an unexpected turn. "Building Evacuated Because of Dead Rat," reads a Fox 40 News headline. "Rotting Dead Rodent Causes State Building Evacuation," announces CBS Sacramento.

Apparently, some astute firefighters traced the odor to a decomposing rodent lodged in a soda machine. There's a burst of laughter back on Engine 109 as the dispatcher cancels the call. Cordova fire crews have this one under control.

The hazmat is off and the drill's back on.

Wet Drill Fire Attack

"Dude, that's our fire!"

As the engine glides to a stop at  5307 Marconi Ave., some of the firefighters discover themselves in familiar territory. On September 15, 2005, the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District responded to an actual apartment fire in this same complex.

"Metro firefighters arrived to find fire and smoke pouring from the upstairs apartment unit," reads a 2005 press release issued by the Sac Metro Fire District. Neighbors reported that two men were trapped inside the burning apartment.

As the drill is wrapping up, I ask Smith to show me the apartment where the actual fire had been. He points to a set of boarded windows on the second floor.

Firefighter Andy Whaley was also on the scene. "There was smoke coming out of the second floor," he says, pointing to the top of a dimly-lit stairwell. “I went up, did a quick search of the building, and found a guy in this first apartment here."

The first apartment was inundated with smoke but was not actually on fire. The man was sitting on the couch, disoriented and confused, and unable to get himself out.

"Andy got him out and handed him off to my firefighter, Paul Burke," Smith said. "I was behind Paul at the top of the stairs. We brought the guy down and handed him off to a paramedic. Paul turned his ankle on a piece of hose down here as I was going back up."

Meanwhile, Whaley could see the second victim trapped in the burning apartment.

"He was lying in the living room. He was on his side with his back to the fire, and he was getting burned."

Whaley started to extinguish the flames, but the hose line kinked, cutting off the water supply. 

"I knocked down as much fire as I could and then I went in to go get my guy. And he's about...250?" he asks, looking at the captain.

"At least," Smith replies.

The man was unconscious, which meant he was 250 pounds of dead weight. There was no easy way to do this.

"I turned him, got him pointed to the door, and started to move him," Whaley says. "And then I looked up and saw the top of this red helmet crawling my way," he waves a hand toward the captain's helmet.

“We just grabbed on and pulled for our lives," Smith concluded. "We got him out and into the hallway. Two other guys showed up, and we brought him downstairs and gave him to an ambulance. Both men are alive today."

Opposite Extreme

The next call is an 86-year old man with a dangerously low blood sugar. The sirens go on for the second time today.

I follow the trail of firefighters through the cramped house to a bedroom.

A neighbor lady is talking to the firefighters.

"He lives alone," she says. "So I check every morning to make sure his drapes are open by 9:30. If he hasn't opened them, I call his daughter, and she calls him. She couldn't reach him today, so we knew something was wrong."

I can barely see the patient from behind the curtain of firefighters and paramedics, but I can see enough to know that amidst all the commotion in the house, one figure is lying very still.

But that's only until the paramedics administer insulin. I'm standing on the porch talking to one of the paramedics when the patient himself comes walking through the front door, a firefighter at either elbow, and sits down on the stretcher.

"That happens a lot with blood sugar patients as soon as they get their insulin," Smith explains once we're back on the engine. "A lot of times with guys like this, once they revive, they refuse to even go to the hospital. Fortunately, he was willing to go."

Fire

The last call of the morning is for a trash can fire behind the 99 Cents Only Store on Marconi Avenue.

The fire was built by a small encampment of homeless people trying to keep warm. Now the camp is dispersed and a sheriff is on the scene.

"Grab the water can," Smith says, as we jump from the engine.

A few of the campers sit cross-legged on the concrete at the side of the building, their faces expressionless. They had cut a hole in the barbed wire fence, and now we retrace their steps through the hole and then up a grassy slope to a smoking concrete garbage can.

The "water can" is actually a 2.5 gallon fire extinguisher and it easily does the trick.

"This fire was actually very safe," the captain says as the smoke clears. "It wasn't going to spread."

We crawl back through the fence. It's about 12:30 pm, and we're on our way back to the fire station for the first time since leaving it this morning.

Back at the station, I get a picture of myself in front of the fire engine. Then I say good bye to the firefighters, remove the "EMS Ride-Along" badge from my sweater, and prepare to resume my civilian life.

As I walk to my car, the station alarm is sounding once again. I'm still fumbling around my purse for my car keys when Engine 109 pulls out of the garage, lights and sirens on. The firefighters wave to me and I wave back as we go our separate ways.

For all our latest fire coverage, please see our Fire Watch topic page at Fairoaks-Carmichael.patch.com/topics/Fire-Watch.