The last night of our split shift in February I was assigned to the Rescue Truck at Station 72. I was hoping for a quiet night so that I could do some last minute studying before going to the Fire College. Unfortunately, or fortunately, that was not to be.

At just after 6:00 p.m. a call came in for a fire in District 74. That district has only a volunteer station in it so two trucks from Station 72 and one from Station 73 were also dispatched. One of the Firefighters from the back of the Rescue Truck dropped off to drive the Tanker Truck.

We had quite a long way to go and as we drove we could hear the other trucks arrive. The first in Captain called for more tanker trucks even before he got on location because as he put it "It's the biggest fire I've seen."

The fire was in a large mechanical/storage building. It was through the roof and the building itself was pretty much a write off right from the start. There was a house and a few out buildings on the property as well as a vehicle compound. This called for a defensive attack to simply protect the exposures.

When we arrived, the Platoon Chief was already there. I walked to the back of his truck and asked for an assignment. He put me in charge of the Water Sector. That made me responsible for organizing the Tanker Trucks into a shuttle system that would ensure there was enough water at the scene at all times. That seemed to be quite a challenge, especially since I'd never done it before.

As it turned out it was fairly simple. We laid out three port-a-tanks and grabbed as many hard suction hoses as we could find. The biggest limitation was that the Pumper only had two suction inlets. It was one thing to get water to the scene but it was another to get it on the fire. The pumper was already supplying two hand lines and they were deploying a master stream.

To shuttle the water we had two 6,800L tankers from Vaughan, one 6,800L tanker from Nobleton, one 9,000L tanker from Bramton and a 15,000L works department water truck from Vaughan. All of these vehicles had to drive about two kilometers to the nearest hydrant to fill up and then return. The round trip took about fifteen minutes. At times we seemed to be rich in water with two tankers dumping and one waiting to dump. At other times I found myself staring longingly up the road for the next truck as our port-a-tanks got sucked down.

We got a little bit ahead of the game when the Incident Commander disconnected the Pumper to bring in the Aerial truck. They set up as close to the fire as they could and the Pumper pulled into place behind and relayed water to them. Once the Aerial got its boom up and started flowing water from its big nozzle, the water started disappearing in a hurry.

By adjusting the flow of water to the Aerial we managed to keep a steady supply going. As the fire was knocked down we cut the flow back even more and we managed to free up the Tankers from the other departments. We thanked them for their help and sent them home. In total we moved 317,000L of water at this fire.

There were still some hot spots but the Incident Commander didn't want anyone crawling around in the debris in the dark so he set up a fire watch. We placed a port-a-tank and a tanker up close to the building where it could handle any trouble. Then most of the trucks cleared the scene. We went back to our station and the crew that had been there all night went up to do the fire watch until shift change in the morning. The newspaper said Firefighters were on the scene for more than 18 hours but we really only fought the fire for about five hours.

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FIRES These are stories about recent fires;

• House Fire
• Tanker Truck to a Garbage Bin Fire
• Tanker Trunk to a Hopper Fire
• Car Fire
• Warehouse Fire
• House Fire
• Apartment Fire
• House Fire

MOTOR VEHICLE ACCIDENTS These are stories about car and truck accidents;

• Single Car Rollover
• Head-on Crash
• Rush Hour Accident
• Single Car Flip
• Car vs. Garbage Truck
• Van Rollover
• Sport Utility Vehicle Rollover
• 500m from the Dealership
• Left Turn Mistake

RESCUES These are stories about rescues we have made;

• Man Trapped in a Trailer

HAZARDOUS MATERIALS These are stories about emergencies involving Hazardous Materials;

• No Calls

MEDICAL We go to a lot of medical calls, but it is not fair to the people involved for me to describe their medical problems here. I can tell you about one incident and how it effected me;

• Stress

OTHER Sometimes interesting things happen around the Firehall;

• Skunk in the Firehall