Raleigh/Wake Firefighting Blog  -

The Wake County Fire Commission has scheduled a second work session for Thursday, March 6, at 6:30 PM, at the Wake EMS Training Facility, located in the lower level of the Wake County Commons Building at 4011 Carya Drive. The purpose of the work session is for the Fire Commission to prioritize elements of the Staffing and Facility components of the Long Range Business Plan. The latter was unanimously approved at the last work session on February 21, 2008.

From a reader, here's a Hawaiian-style shirt with firefighter icons. Same is sold at Fireswap.com. Flashy, but could be a bit brighter...

The Raleigh-Wake County Emergency Communications Center is accepting applications through the end of this week for call takers and telecommunicators. They anticipate starting their next academy in May. For more information, see the city's employment web site.

Every time you save a JPEG image, such as a digital photograph, the quality is reduced. Depending upon the settings of the software that is re-saving the file, the reduction of quality can be minimal or worse. JPEG photos that are portrait-oriented, are often stored in cameras in landscape-orientation. The person taking picture just re-oriented the camera. But the images have to be rotated when shared or printed, lest the viewer think the photographer is a pain in the neck. One useful tool for rotating JPEG images is the viewer InfranView. It has a plug-in that performs loss-less rotation of JPEG images. Meaning, they are re-saved but without any loss of quality. Highly recommended application.

Raleigh Fire Department members go under the clippers on Saturday, March 1, at 2:00 p.m., at Hibernian Restaurant & Pub at 311 Glenwood Avenue. They are raising money for the St. Baldrick's Foundation. More information about the soon-to-shorn is available hair. You can also contribute online. Funds, that is, not locks.

Here's a picture from WRAL of that gas tanker in Johnston County that overturned. Chad Flowers snapped same. They flip one out there, what, every four months? Every eight?

Raleigh Fire Department 2007: 95 Years of Tradition is nearly ready to send to the publisher. Last-minute orders can still be submitted online at www.mtpublishing.com. Look under Products, and Coming Soon. The hardcover book will number 160 pages. It will be sized 9 by 12 inches, and with all color pages. The yearbook is priced at $50, though that will increase in a couple weeks. READ MORE

Also noted by Lee in his photos from the shop, Ladder 112 is sporting a new look. The 1990 Spartan/LTI was damaged in April. Click to enlarge either of Lee's photos below:

This 2008 Pierce Enforcer was delivered on Monday. Equipped with a 1500 GPM pump, a 500 gallon water tank, and 20 gallon foam cell, it's the replacement for Engine 9. Their old engine is planned for Engine 21, whose old engine will go into reserve. See more photos from Lee.

SSP part 2. This month's issue of EMS Magazine features a feature from Wake County EMS Chief Skip Kirkwood. The topic is incident comment, and includes a summary of the nursing home evacuation in Fuquay-Varina on September 14, 2007. Good stuff, and with a few familiar photos.

SSP part 1. The February edition of FireWatch has been posted to the CTV site. The community television show is produced by the Raleigh Fire Department. This month's edition features an interview with RFD historian Mike Legeros, on the subject of the department's past line-of-duty deaths.

As this media release notes, cellular telephone companies will no longer be required to provide analog service as of midnight on February 18, 2008. Presumably, this ends the ability of old phones to dial 911. That was a great trick. Keep a deactivated phone around, and you could dial 911 from practically anywhere. Guess we'll have stick with our old CB radios and channel 9.

The Internet is a scary place, right? The boss reads your e-mail, your credit card number has already been stolen, and online predators are targeting your children. Right? A new study debunks the last item, according to researchers who study the nature of such Internet-initiated crimes. The complete paper is also available. Such findings compel the question: what other social aspects of the Internet do we exaggerate, or grossly exaggerate? And, conversely, what do we under-estimate? Regarding the latter, the impact of e-mail and messaging comes immediately to mind, and in the context of concentration in the workplace. Or at home. Or in mobile settings, with wireless. More later, and maybe some best practices.

The Clayton Fire Department is conducting an open house at Station 2 on Sunday, February 24, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. They recently completed an addition to the facility, adding living quarters for a full-time crew. The station is located at 800 Highway 42 East.

The Chapel Hill Fire Department has put some of their history online, including a nifty interactive time line. Click to view the site:

FEMA has issued information regarding that rogue satellite that the military's trying to shoot down. Here's their space object responder guide. Here's their memo to responders. Here's their concept of operations. Needless to say, the odds of same striking here are, well, astronomically low.

Raleigh Fire Department Historian Mike Legeros will be speaking at Olivia Raney Local History Library on Sunday, March 9, at 2:30 p.m. Sponsored by the Wake County Historical Society, the 45-minute presentation on the history of the Raleigh Fire Department is free and open to the public. The library is located at 4016 Carya Drive, near the intersection of Poole Road and the Beltline.

Let's recap the last couple days of activity in Raleigh, with data as observed by Mike and Lee, and from media reports. We'll start with Saturday morning's house fire. The address was 704 Princeton Street. The structure was a single-story, brick-and-frame, 1,414 square-foot single-family dwelling built in 1968. Alarm time about 3:35 p.m. Car 20 was first on scene and reported fire through the roof, and one subject reported trapped inside. READ MORE

As seen on the big board at the communications center, with proportions corrected from widescreen monitor mode, here's what the real-time view of Wake County EMS units looks like. Click to enlarge. Then, indulge this blogger's favorite "big board" quote, from Stanley Kubrick's great comedy from 1964. "I... I... I don't exactly how to put this sir, are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be!? I mean, he'll see everything! He'll see the big board!" George C. Scott to Peter Sellars, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

This looks like the best image of last night's explosives demolition, from the WRAL story. See these daytime photos from Lee, long before the big booms started happening.

The Cary Fire Department reports the following news. New Scott AP-75 air packs have been purchased for the entire department. The department bought 124 air packs, enough for both operations and training. The main reason for the upgrade was the number of older air packs that were reaching the end of their service life. Personnel are being training on the new air packs, which are expected to be placed in service in the beginning of March. READ MORE

Weather.com says 62 degrees and 19% humidity, with winds from the west at 20 mph, gusting to 32 mph. One big brush fire in Johnston County so far, plus trees and wires starting to fall down around. The Weather Service has also issued these watches and warnings for Wake County:

• Fire Weather Watch from 9:00 a.m., Feb 10 until 9:00 p.m., Feb 10
  
• Fire Weather Warning from 9:00 a.m., Feb 10 until 9:00 p.m., Feb 10
  
• Wind Advisory from 12:00 p.m., Feb 10 until 9:00 p.m., Feb 10.

Apartment fire at 7013 Woodbend Drive. Two-story, wood-frame, 10,672 square-foot apartment building. Engine 4 on scene with a major working fire. Battalion 1 in command. Ladder 16 and Ladder 11 positioned, but not needed. Interior attack contains and controls. Alarm time about 9:55 p.m. Units included E4, E9, E15, E19, E11, E18, L16, L11, R19, R14, B1, B4, C5, A8, C20, C2, EMS 16, EMS D1, EMS T1. See preliminary photos.

Blogging about fires, fire departments, fire history, fire photography, and some times other stuff. Such as writing. Here's a great Word tip. Use this to count the number of times you've used a particular word in a document. It's a great way to check for overuse.

1. In Word 2007, click Find in the ribbon. In Word 2003, click Edit > Replace.
2. In the Find What field, enter the word you want to check
3. In the Replace With field, enter the characters ^&.
4. Click Replace All.
5. The number of instances of the word is displayed. No words are replaced, as Word ignores those two special characters.
6. And if you don't believe that no words are replaced after step #5, click Edit > Undo from the main menu.

Retired Assistant Chief Roy Kenneth Lane passed away Thursday, February 8. He was a 32-year veteran of the Raleigh Fire Department when he retired in 1997. Visitation will be at L. Harold Poole Funeral Home in Knightdale on Sunday night, February 10, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. The funeral will be Monday, February 11, at 1:00 p.m. at Wakefield Baptist Church, 13029 Falls of the Neuse Road, with burial at Raleigh Memorial Park at 7501 Glenwood Avenue.

The Morrisville Fire Department recently took a trip to inspect their coming KME platform ladder. It's due in a few more weeks. Their old ladder's been sold, thus the reason Parkwood's ladder's at their station at present. How many ladders does that make in Wake these days? Let's see. Raleigh has 7, plus three reserves. Cary has 3, with a fourth almost here. Apex has 2. Bay Leaf has 1. Fuquay-Varina has 1. Garner has 1. Holly Springs has 1. Knightdale has 1, albeit a Squrt. Morrisville has 1. Wake Forest has 1. Wendell has 1. Zebulon has 1.

It's history week here at Blog Center. Look at these classic rigs as operated by Clayton Rescue Squad back in the day. Clayton Area EMS Asst. Chief Jason Thompson continues to uncover old photos. They and some others will be posted later.

Here's another a great picture that recently surfaced, showing driver training at the Fairgrounds in the 1970s. This is the first color photo seen of one of the city's American LaFrance 700 Series pumpers. Raleigh had four of them, two in 1951 and two in 1953. They were delivered by rail, as the story goes. This particular pumper is lettered C, which was the designation for reserve engines. It is probably a 1951 model, and would have served as Engine 3, Engine 8, and Engine 14. See more of these photos, but don't cut yourself on those sharp hairstyles.

The Wake County Fire Commission has scheduled a work session for Thursday, February 21, at 6:30 PM, at the Wake EMS Training Facility, located in the lower level of the Wake County Commons Building at 4011 Carya Drive. Note the earlier time than regularly scheduled meetings. The purpose of the work session is for the Fire Commission to continue discussion and work on the long-range business plan.

Let's divert exclusively into local history. Lee recently found this photo of the old Boylan Heights bridge. Built in 1913, the Warren Truss bridge was demolished in 1982. It was a registered as a national landmark, and its dilemma surrounding its status at the time led to the creation of the Boylan Heights Neighborhood Association. What's equally interesting about this undated photograph is that same shows a second bridge, that extended Martin Street from West Street to Kinsey Street. You can see still where the road ended, atop Kinsey and looking east.

While killing time on New Bern Avenue yesterday morning, this composition exercise presented itself. Objective #1: Shoot Air Mobile 1, lighted by the sun peeking over WakeMed. Objective #2: Shoot from the public sidewalk, versus the hospital grounds. Perhaps with a stepladder, this would have looked better. But it was a fun, fleeting exercise.

Two alarms at 3211 Shoreview Road. Two-and-a-half story, wood-frame apartments with 13,358 square-feet. Alarm time just after 6:00 p.m. Engine 18 first on scene. Battalion 4 initial command. WRAL reports at least 10 units damaged. NBC17 reports four firefighters were briefly trapped, but escaped unharmed. Listen to the radio traffic. Photos from Lee forthcoming:

WXII12 has a slide show of surprisingly up close images from today's plane crash outside Mount Airy. They've also got the 911 calls on audio. Other photos and incident details are available at the Mount Airy News, including the image below: