I was in charge of the Aerial Truck on a beautiful summer afternoon when a call came in for a person crushed by a fence. It sounded strange but in this job you find almost anything can happen. We responded with the pumper to one of the richer areas of my district.

I was expecting to find a backyard fence toppled over on a workman. But, when we arrived there was a lot of commotion surrounding a truck parked on the street. The Captain of the pumper got into the back of the truck and immediately called for his crew to climb in. When I reported to him he showed me what the problem was.

Inside the truck were about 100 sections of a metal fence. They were all standing upright on the floor of the truck. Between every ten or fifteen sections there was a strap that went across the truck. These straps kept the sections upright and allowed workers to unload the fence a bit at a time. In this case one of the workers had been undoing a strap when the load shifted. His leg was trapped between a stack of fence sections and the top of the wheel well of this truck. To make matters worse the next strap forward had also come loose so this poor fellow had about thirty of these fence sections lying on top of his leg. He was in a lot of pain.

Also inside the truck were a couple of this guy's coworkers who had been trying to hold the pile off of their friend. These guys were exhausted. The Captain replaced them with two of his Firefighters. That was a tough assignment because it called for just brute strength. Fortunately the Firefighters he assigned were kind of brutish themselves so they did a good job.

Meanwhile I was outside the truck looking for an assignment for my crew. Here the landscaping supervisor pointed out a door on the side of the truck. We could use it to get inside ahead of the fallen pile and try to relieve some of the pressure. The key wasn't handy so we used bolt cutters to remove the lock. Luckily when we opened the door we could see the last strap that was still doing its job. All we needed to do was unload everything in the truck from this strap back.

At about this time the Rescue truck arrived. Two of its crew went inside the truck and the other member came to help at the door. We also had a cop and the other landscapers helping. We managed to pull the first few sections of the fence out through the door and then we got someone inside to help feed them out to us.

Each section of this fence was about six feet by eight feet and weighed about seventy-five pounds. As quickly as we could we pulled the sections out through the side door of the truck and stacked them up outside. I suppose I was the sector officer for this part of the operation but the work was so obvious that the only instructions I gave was where to start the next pile.

It was heavy work both inside the truck and outside. Everyone could see the need to get the weight off of this worker's leg and that adrenaline pump sustained us for a while, but lifting section after section of this fence took its toll. By the end there were some pretty tired Firefighters and civilian helpers.

At some time during this call the ambulance arrived. The Paramedics climbed into the back of the truck and started patient care. Once the fence was removed they got ready to package the patient for transport to the hospital. There was an improvised ramp from the street to the truck deck. This ramp was just a couple of boards. We wheeled the stretcher up the ramp and I noticed that it was very unsteady so I called for another Firefighter to help me support it while the patient was wheeled down it and into the ambulance.

I never did see the extent of his injuries. He remained conscious through the whole ordeal, which is a good sign; although it meant he also got to experience all the pain. Imagine thirty sections of fence leaning on your leg each weighing about seventy-five pounds. I wouldn't want to trade places with that guy.

I once had a discussion with our Chief Training Officer about why we don't necessarily hire the person who gets the best score on the physical test. He made a very good point that we are trying to move away from this being a purely physical job and that we are looking for smarter ways of doing things. His argument made a lot of sense to me at the time but at a call like this I was glad we had Firefighters with some muscle on them.

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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