Lucky Indeed!

It's funny what people talk about when they are quite obviously in a state of shock and then relieve. Last night I spent four hours fighting a fire along with a number of my crew in a stone built fuel shed attached to the gable end of a three hundred year old stone built typical Irish farmers cottage. The shed would have been part of the original cottage at one time but had been annexed off at a later date to house animals I suspect. The currant owners had used it to store coal, and a boiler, plus rather stupidly in my opinion the plastic fuel tank for the home heating oil for the boiler. Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket' Oh did I mention the dog kennel!
When we arrived at the scene we were greeted by farmer type men all shouting at us about the time it took, and F'ing! this and F'ing slow! that. We as firemen are used to this, after all if it was my house at risk I would be panic stricken as well I should imagine. Any way a fire had somehow started in the shed quickly spreading to the two ton of coal, then spreading to the rest of the rubbish in the shed, until it melted the plastic fuel tank that as you can imagine then spilt it's rather flammable contents into the fire, thus creating a rather large fire ball that engulfed the whole shed and ran out the door and into the garden. Mean while we were concentrating on putting water onto the gable end.





The Farmers with all there charm that they showed us when we arrived then told us we were F'ing stupid the fire is over there! and in the garden, what are we wasting the water on the side of the house for? I had to point out too him that he had just answered his own question, ie the house was over this side! After a while we had the fire under control but we feared the worse for the dog who was housed in the shed. He then surprised us all when he came trotting back into the yard just as we had the last of the fire out. The owners of the house who happened to be English were amazed at how well their house must of been built and remarked on how brave the farmers were to stop the fire spreading into the house. This made us smile and nod politely in agreement. For what had saved there house was indeed the standard of workmanship in the solid three foot thick walls but more importantly the quick thinking and training we as emergency specialist have.




The last two house fire's we have attended haven't ended so happily, for the fire had gotten into the roof space and quickly spread to the whole of the houses. We learn lessons from each incident we attend, this happy ending was the result of these lessons. We had to knock the walls of the shed down for they had started to crack and lean dangerously over, we also had to get the electricity board out to cut the supply to the house as the main junction box was badly damaged. Upon a final precautionary tour of the house to check for damage or hot spots within the wall with a thermal camera we noticed that there were no smoke alarms, or shall I say no batteries in the smoke alarms, the owner explained that they annoy her when they go off! So she took the batteries out. For some reason all I could think of at that point was Bob Dylan 'Blowing in the wind'. She then went on about the awful weather we were having whilst we got back into our engine and left, leaving the farmers to there celebratory whiskey, and the dog who's name was in fact lucky to a new home inside by the aga!