Caption this #14

[bintarab]

Hahaha -- I just remembered a funny news story (funny in a serious way that made me shake my head) that hit the radio a couple of weeks ago: Seems a Fire crew and truck responded to a call from a local outpatient clinic that a 70-yr-old lady was having a heart attack there and then. So the truck is zooming along, but somehow one of the firemen convinced the others to let him stop by a fast food joint to make and collect on a burger order. Apparently it "only" slowed them by 2 minutes. Needless to say, when the fire chief found out, he fired the hungry fireman.

They were joking about the absurdity of this news item on my favorite radio station's morning show ALL WEEK LONG.

~bint

[Ed]

Did the patient live? Was the service any quicker at McDonalds because of the lights and sirens, or did they firetruck have to pull into the waiting bay? Damn good way to jump the queue, either way, that's for sure

[Ed]

"We're supposed to do whut exacly? Hell no - we ain't running into no burnin building - we only joined up 'cos we liked the uniform."

[bintarab]

Did the patient live? Was the service any quicker at McDonalds because of the lights and sirens, or did they firetruck have to pull into the waiting bay? Damn good way to jump the queue, either way, that's for sure

Ok, let's see how many details of this story I got wrong:

• the woman was 77, not 70
• she was suffering respiratory distress, not cardiac failure
• the fireman went to the Burger House near the fire station before jumping into the truck
• the fireman in question was the on-duty supervisor at the time and the other firefighters could not leave without him because there has to be at least 4 firemen in a truck to respond to a call (I thought he was just rank-and-file), and he's a 12-year veteran to boot
• this happened in January, but he was only just fired at the end of May

Oh yeah, and this happened in Austin, Texas, (which is where I live); I had thought it was somewhere else.

Here's the article:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5805911.html

~bint

[PaulH]

Although they'd managed to get the uniforms, it wasn't until they got there that the Alabama fire crew realised they didn't have a truck.

[canadian]

Firefighters watch as fire hall burns to ground

THE CANADIAN PRESS

PRINCE GEORGE– In an ironic turn of events, members of the Willow River Volunteer Fire Department in northeastern B.C. were forced to stand by early Friday morning and watch helplessly as their fire hall burnt to the ground.

The fire, first detected at about 2 a.m., consumed the building and destroyed everything inside.

The community's regional district director Kevin Dunphy called the incident "extremely frustrating."

A construction company brought in a fire truck from a nearby rock crushing operation to prevent the fire from spreading to other buildings in the rural community, about 35 kilometres northeast of Prince George.

Dunphy said the weather was in their favour, as if it had been windy it would have caused some serious challenges.

When the fire was put out, Dunphy said all that was left was the department's fire truck sitting in the middle of a pile of ashes.

"We had a pretty good number of the fire department turn out and all we could do was stand there and basically watch," he said.

The hall, which was just large enough to hold the truck, fire fighting equipment and a small office, was just four years old. Dunphy could not say how much it cost to build.

"It was basically built mostly on donations and community spirit," he said.

Volunteers must arrange an investigator to determine the cause of the fire and meet with an insurance company.

A replacement fire hall will be constructed, he said, and in the meantime there is a hope a surplus fire truck from elsewhere in the regional district can be brought in to provide a level of fire protection.

The fire department has about 15 volunteer members who provide help to about 350 people in Willow River and neighbouring Giscome.

[Ed]

Oops That's unfortunate, eh?