DAT DIARIES: The Changing of Seasons
-By Bob Wade, DAT Night Team Leader/Supervisor–ARC of SE Wisconsin-Milwaukee, WI.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Another week on call with the Milwaukee Disaster Action Team came to a quiet end at 5:30am this morning, with only three calls over the seven nights that we were at the ready. The Day Team had 5 fire calls.
This is my third autumn season with the team, and it’s already falling into the same pattern as the previous ones.
We’d be lying if we said we don’t look for reasons for the calls we respond to. We do look for patterns, some sort of rational, in our minds.
The summer brings lots of arson fires, the winter, more electrical.
My friends outside of the Red Cross seem to think there would be a lot of Christmas tree fires in December, but last year, I only responded to one on the night team…the year before none, and I was on duty for most of those weeks.
Whenever we experience a hard change in the weather conditions here, the fire calls seem to take a breather. Don’t get me wrong, we still get them, but not as many, and they don’t seem to be as big, and it only gets quiet like this for a week or two.
Call us superstitious, but you can’t help be just that when your job is to respond to disasters in your local community at a moments notice.
The Milwaukee DAT doesn’t just respond to calls within the city limits, our territory covers the entire county. During the census count of 2006, the number takers came up with a good 915,000+ of us living here.
This past week, on the night team, showed signs of the changing weather conditions in Milwaukee County.
Saturday night, I was up on a step-ladder, installing a new smoke detector above the outside of my bedroom door when I heard a full assignment for a house fire get called out across my police scanner, with a specific request from the scene for the Red Cross to respond.
With drill in hand, I jumped off the ladder, ran for my gear and was out the door!…almost bringing the drill with me.
Arriving at the scene first, I approached two police officers sitting within their squad cars. They told me that it was a minor basement fire, caused by either a faulty furnace or something electrical.
The home, in which the fire had occurred, was a rear cottage. With most homes built in the early 1900’s around here, this type of structure is fairly common within and outside of the city limits.
At this particular call, there were two homes upon a single property. We usually find that the homeowner lives in the forward home, and rents the rear cottage in order to make some additional income.
I spoke with the homeowner first, and he was quite upset. He was standing next to his vehicle out on the street, and obviously agitated by what had just occurred.
“She hasn’t paid her rent for two months now. She promised it to me last week and still hasn’t paid it. I’m getting sick of being the nice guy. I know that they had their electricity turned off earlier this month,” he blurted out to me all at once.
“Do you know how the fire started,” I asked him.
“It was something electrical in the basement I think,” he responded.
“So they must’ve had their electricity turned back on at some point then? I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
I thanked the landlord for all of the information he shared with me and assured him that we, the Red Cross, would take great care of his tenants.
As I walked back to the rear of the property, I could see a man, woman and child sitting out on the front porch, staring at me as I approached.
I introduced myself, told them that I was called by the Milwaukee Fire Department to come out and see if they needed any assistance.
The Mom let out a tearful sigh and said, “Yes.”
As I listened to her story, it sounded sadly familiar. So many families in this city wake up, each and every morning, good people struggling to pay their bills for their most basic survival needs; shelter, gas, electricity, food, telephone, clothing, etc…
As a member of the Milwaukee DAT, I know that my greatest strength at this very moment are my words, for my mission is to bring, express, and give hope.
I explained to the family how we would be able to help them. They had never heard of the American Red Cross Disaster Action Team before and seemed extremely relieved that we existed.
“Wow! God Bless You! Thank you so very much!” were some of the comments we received while we were there.
Zach, the on-duty Team Leader, and I wrote up a hotel voucher, client assistance card, and gave them comfort kits, before telling them to call the American Red Cross Chapter at 26th & Wisconsin Ave for further assistance via the life-saving client case workers on Monday morning.
It wasn’t until 4am Monday morning of this week that I got the next call to respond to a house fire, again up on the north side of the city.
I had been in a deep sleep and never even heard it come across the police scanner, which I keep on next to my pillow.
My phone rang. I jumped straight out of bed, and struggled to get the cell phone open in order to even answer it.
Everything seems to move in slow motion at 4am, no matter if it’s a call to respond to a fire, or if it’s a wrong number.
They’ve given us new cell phones, which are hard to flip open when you’re trying too hard.
After getting myself together, mentally and physically, I was off on a long journey, to the far north side of the city, not knowing exactly what I was about to find once I got there.
I’m not the team leader this week, so am driving my own car. What a nice break from always driving the van. I can get to fires much quicker in my own car, it seems.
There’s very little traffic out on the streets of Milwaukee at 4am, and very few red lights. I’m there in 10 minutes.
The fire and police personnel have already left the scene of this fire so I know it must’ve been minor. I call in my arrival to Zach, the TL, and see that he’s doing a “U-ee” just up the street from me.
After getting out of our vehicles, and shining our flashlights around, we finally locate the house in which we were called out for. We see a one and a half story, wood-framed home before us.
”The lights are on to this house,” we say to each other as Zach rings the doorbell.
A young woman comes to the door and welcomes us in.
She escorts us in through the front entrance way and directly in to the front bedroom.
Within this bedroom there is some light, coming out of the bathroom. There’s a queen-sized bed in the middle of the floor, no bed frame, a space heater next to it, blowing heat out, and not much else.
The woman tells us that while she was fast asleep, then awakened by the sounds of popping and hissing. She looked over at the wall and saw the electrical outlet on fire, when she quickly called 911.
Her bedroom filled up with smoke from the electrical fire, but it never activated the smoke alarm out in her living room.
How ironic, I thought to myself. That’s the exact reason why I was up on that ladder, just before this call, installing that new smoke detector on the outside and just above my bedroom door.
I know that when I sleep with my bedroom door closed, it pretty much seals that room off from all of the others, so if there would ever to be a fire, it would probably have to get totally out of control before it would set off the smoke alarm inside of my bedroom, and by the time that would go off, I would only have seconds to escape, and it would probably be me having to jump out of my 2nd floor window.
I have responded to many a fire where the occupants had to jump out of their 2nd floor window and they’ve rarely walked away from such a thing without a trip in an ambulance or Med Unit to the hospital.
You’d think that it wouldn’t be such a dangerous thing to drop yourself out of a window from the 2nd floor, but realize that you are probably in a hurry–in a state of panic–if and when you may ever have to do such a thing, but I’ve met people who refused to take that one way out until just the heat from the fire started to physically burn them on their backs…then they jumped.
The woman told me that the firefighters checked out her smoke detector while they were there, and after hitting it a few times, it finally went off.
That’s not the confidence builder/smoke detector story you may want to hear from someone else, but it needs to be told. There’s no such thing as having too many working smoke detectors in your home.
One of the most thoughtful and caring gifts you could ever give to another is a package with a smoke detector, carbon monoxide detector, and fire extinguisher within it. It’s a great way to say, “I love you!”
I did the recommended “daylight savings time” check of my smoke detectors this past Saturday and found that two of them had dead batteries in them-one up in the attic, the other one down in the basement. I didn’t hear the chirps as their batteries were dying. All the more reason to follow that established rule of changing the batteries in your smoke detectors whenever you change the clocks back or forward.
The fire department had cut a nice square in the wall around this woman’s electrical outlet in her bedroom, and then shut off the circuit breaker to it from the basement.
According to the woman before me, the firefighters had been extremely meticulous and careful in how they handled this possible house fire.
After giving her a few of my own tips on smoke detectors, and an explanation on how fire moves through the electrical wires within a home, I asked her if she’d be comfortable waiting a few hours until the Chapter opened up so the case workers could give her assistance in the days to come, and she agreed.
Most of the electricity was still on in her home and she had the space heater fan on in her bedroom, which of course is not the safest way to heat your room.
I wished her all the very best and stressed my previous point that she call the Red Cross at 8:30am, as she thanked me, and headed back out to the van.
Zach was writing up the incident report, put it in an envelope, handed it on over to me, since I was going past the Chapter on my way home, and we figured we could get at least an hour of sleep before having to get up for our real jobs.
“I hope I don’t see you later,” I told Zach, jokingly.
As I was about a mile away from the Chapter, I hear, “Have the Red Cross respond here,” from across my police scanner.
“No Way!” I think to myself, as I pick up my cell phone to call Zach back.
Rinnnnng!…”Hello?”
“Zach, did you hear that on your scanner?”
“No, I’m already in bed,” he responded.
“What? How are you in bed already?
“I live near that last call,” he replied.
“OK. Well, I just heard another call for us. It’s somewhere on 1st street. I didn’t hear the exact address. I’m going to drop this report off at the Chapter, then position myself near an on-ramp to the freeway and wait until I hear the exact address.” I told him.
It was either going to be north 1st or south 1st street. There’s a huge difference between those two potential directions and any sort of address in this city so I pulled over near the Eastbound I-94 on ramp at N 25th street and waited.
Two minutes later, Zach called me and said, “3400 block of N 1st St!!”
“I’m on it!” I yelled back at him through the phone, arriving at that address only 5 minutes later.
No fire engine lights to guide us in, again, I did catch the lights of a Battalion Commander’s SUV and parked behind him, on the wrong side of the road.
The battalion commander got out of his vehicle as he saw me.
“We’ve gotta stop meeting this way,” he said as he recognized me.
Every time I see this particular battalion commander he’s usually evacuating 50-unit apartment complexes, and asking me what we can do for the occupants.
The last time I ran into him was about a month ago and we opened up the Red Cross Chapter itself as a shelter for about 25 people overnight.
“I’m Steve, by the way,” he stated as he shook my hand.
“Bob Wade,” I replied.
Steve didn’t hesitate to give me the low-down on the situation, “Gas leak from the furnace…We turned the gas off…Ten people…Won’t be able to stay here for the near short term…”
“What will you be able to do for them?” he asked me specifically.
“Well, it’s getting close to the time that the Red Cross Chapter opens up…they still have electricity right?”
“Yes,” Steve replied.
“Is it safe for them to remain there for a few more hours?”
“Oh ya, they just won’t have heat,” Steve came back.
“Since it’s so close to the Chapter opening up, where our case-workers can take over, and seeing that it’s safe for these two families to remain within their homes, I’ll probably suggest that they wait until 8:30am to call for assistance.”
“Sounds good to me” Steve replied. “Will you be needing anything else from us?” He added.
“No. We’ll take great care of them.” I replied.
Zach pulled up in the van at the very moment that I was walking away from Steve and as he rolled his window down, I said, “It sounds like the same drill as the last call.”
“Let’s go inside, assess the situation, and see what we’ve got” was my thought at that moment, as I shared it with Zach.
As we approached the front door to the house, Zach said he could smell gas. I couldn’t smell it at first, but when I stopped and took a good whiff, I could smell something in the air, and it didn’t smell right.
Knock knock! A young woman comes to the door, sees us in our Red Cross uniforms and lets us in.
We quickly learn that both families are there in the front rooms of the first floor of this house. I do the quick formal introduction of who we are and why they are there, and then we go forward with the interviews, gathering up the basic information for all those involved.
They are all packed up and ready to evacuate, a young child is sitting upon the couch in front of me with his backpack on.
The Gas Company, WE Energies workers, walk into the room. The man in front has a thing in his hand, looks like a Geiger counter, and it starts clicking uncontrollably.
“Why is it doing that?” the Mom next to me asks. The WE Energies man just shakes his head “No,” as if to try and say, “No worries,” and heads off to the basement with it.
After responding to almost 300 calls with the Milwaukee DAT, I’ve come to realize that while the media never writes a single story in this light, I personally have learned to respect the Gas and Electric workers jobs at a fire with the same level that we give to firefighters.
These men and women risk their lives, show no fear, and do their jobs turning off the electricity to homes and apartments while the flames are still raging out of control…and then they repair them. During lightning storms, in the raging wind and rain, they’re up there, on the poles, doing their jobs. Firefighters couldn’t do their jobs safely without them.
The WE Energies crew recommends ventilation to the home, the source of the leak has been turned off. It’s safe to remain there, but there will be no heat.
I look at the clock on my cell phone, 5:31am, and ask our clients if they’ll feel comfortable remaining in their home until 8:30am, when the Red Cross case-workers will be available. It’s still pretty warm inside of this house, and the sun is about to come up.
They all agree.
We give both families the Red Cross fire pamphlet and show them the phone number to call in a few hours.
We are given hugs, and many thank you’s, by the family members as we depart the home.
Zach and I go back out to the van and in so many words ask each other if we did the right thing there.
In this job, it only take a few minutes to get to know someone, and to want to help them in the best way possible, as if they are members of our own family. We realized that we had made the best possible decision at that moment, and it was in the very best interests of those 10 individuals, given the resources that we had to work with…but still, I always wish we could do more.
As the season moves from fall to winter, and as the temperatures continue to drop, there will be many more residential fires here in Milwaukee County, and we will be there to help…no matter what.
Thank you so much for your support of the American Red Cross!
…Bob
Filed under: Disaster Response
