A Real Christmas Miracle.

Have you ever stopped to think what you would run and save from the flames if you returned home to find your house on fire? This question was once asked of a well known photographer
 Don Mc. Cullin. He was asked which of all of his famous images would he save, he replied the ones that were took by his children, and the ones that reminded him of home!
As a professional firefighter the correct answer would be never go back into a burning building! This advise is given out every day on our TVs and in our school visit's to young faces looking up with questions. "what about my play station, my grannies old doll, my gold fish,cat, baby brother, etc etc, all the things that are important to young minds. We answer back in a straight forward slightly abrupt way, these can be replaced but you can't! There is nothing more important to your parents than you!"
But what if your kids are grown up and have flown the coop, what if all you have left are memories and keep sakes, what then?
It was 9.45pm when we got the call on Christmas Eve, Domestic Fire-Persons Reported! When we arrived at the farmstead one section of the single story cottage was well alight, I could see two men wrestling with an elderly Lady and pulling her back from the door. Thick black smoke was erupting from under the tiles and spewing from the open windows, and a familiar orange glow could be seen from the end room. Mary had been at Christmas mass, her youngest daughter was over for the holidays and had arrived earlier that day as a surprise. She was calling to us and directing us up the boreen, face blackened, her hair disheveled with tears making silvery tracks down her cheeks. Everyone was out Thank god for that! I set my crew to task fighting the fire Breathing apparatus on. Mary and her daughter had arrived back from mass to find Mary's bedroom alight and fire spreading along the corridor of her family home. She had done her best to get in to save her memories! The family albums in the Dinning room, and the watch her Husband had given to her for there first Christmas together, which she kept in the drawer under the mirror on her sideboard in her bedroom. But she had been beaten back from the smoke and then held back by the neighbours who had given them a lift back from the church. Threaded onto the strap of the watch was her Wedding Ring, Engagement ring and her Eternity ring which she could no longer wear because of swollen arthritic fingers. Between gulps of oxygen from beneath the mask she grabbed my hand,
"The house can go! But please try and get these for me, they are all I have left," " promise me" she said, her grasp surprisingly strong for her age. I met her daughter to get a rough lay out of the building, she was in shock and spoke to quickly to understand, however once calmed down, 'I try and do a good impersonation of calm!' Which I have found can spread like a smile once you can achieve it, she spoke clear and well giving me a good description of all of what her elderly mother was after, and I promised that we would do our best but asked her to be strong for her mother and be prepared for the worst. It was a good half hour before my men reported that the fire was out, we had stopped the spread and contained it to two rooms at the end of the house, but there was still a lot of smoke trapped in the attic space and in the other rooms. Mary refused to leave the scene until she had her things, my men were busy clearing out the debris from the fire room, mary's bedroom! As they shovelled out the smouldering mess I set up two men with a small hose to clean through the blackened fused detritus to search for gold. Mary's daughter got on her hands and knees and joined in with the search. It would take a miracle, the room was destroyed and everything in it, the bed springs and old copper bed stead were the only recognisable objects left in the room, even these were blackened and misshaped by the heat of the fire.
Meanwhile I entered the building to set up a 'Venting fan' to help with the smoke. Every room I entered was completely covered in a thick black residue that stuck to the fixtures and fittings like tar, and ran down the walls like condensation, A sight only too familiar to victims of a fire, and surgeons of lung cancer victims! The heat in the subsequent rooms was such that it melted the polystyrene ceiling tiles of the sitting room and had melted the fuse box of the mains electric supply. Anything made of plastic above head hight in most rooms had begun to melt. The lamp shades, curtain hooks, picture frames. I held little hope for the photo albums. As I approached what should have been the Dinning room/best room I feared the worst, the door was blackened and the years of leaded paint had begun to blacken and blister. The door opened into a pristine room, the table set for Christmas, the tree resplendent in the corner, and sat there in the middle of the table the photo album opened at a black and white square format image of the whole family taken out side the house on the door step, a younger Mary holding her new born Daughter who's father took one look at, and named her after her mother, Mary. That was twenty eight years ago Mary senior explained to me between tears of joy! A little time later my driver called me over and handed me a blackened mass of burnt leather, but attached to it was the gleam of silver and gold times three, and the inscription on the back of the watch read, after a rub with a damp cloth,
'To my darling Mary, on our first Christmas' Both Mary's began to cry as Mary senior clutched them to her breast, It has been reported that even I had a tear in my eye, but it was just the effects of the smoke!!!

Miracle's like this don't happen every day, but this one happened for real on Christmas Eve, and despite the fire we were able to give Mary the best present that night, her Memories.

Tallow Bridge to TempleMichael.

Tallow bridge stands at the bottom of Tallow hill and spans the River Bride. Next to the bridge is an old coach house that now serves meals with your pints if you want it. The river here runs fast and clear over a gravel bottom that shines gold in the sunshine between ribbons of bright ivy green weed that dances with every undulation of the currant. This was to be our start point for the first of this years Kayak adventures. Oliver and I had navigated the upper reaches of the bride last year, and ended an exhausting days paddling where we were about to begin today. The water was cold and swollen from the recent rain and swept us quickly down stream with little effort needed from our paddles. We passed through low pasture land and startled a group of young bullocks who stampeded along the top of the bank in front and above us, their hooves sending up mud missiles that splashed down around us like a scene from Pearl Harbour. The river soon widens out and starts the gentle meandering that is common with rivers in the last stages of their Journey to the sea.
The banks hear were built up some time ago when large horse drawn barges would navigate up stream carrying coal or grain, the Georgian brick and stone work still visible through the stems of river sage and willow. Where the roots of trees have managed to push through, the stone work has collapsed into the water forming convenient perches for the ever vigilant heron who seem to patrol every inch of the river, there 'S' shape silhouette only made visible by the dash of white around their 'post it' yellow bill,  and the two black feathers that they wear like a sash around their head. Between the stone of the jetties, the banks of the river have become completely wild again, without mans interference nature has managed to transform the river. Banks have eroded, the beginnings of Ox bow lakes have begun to form where the meandering water has cut into the soft clay, and the submerged branches of long dead trees loom out of the clear water like the spindly bones of skeleton hands that scrape at the bottom of our kayaks.

It was on one of these half submerged trees that we saw something move! As we approached we could see that it was an otter who was busy playing, diving into the water and climbing out again, using the branches as an impromptu diving board. We were quietly drifting trying to make no noise or any movement as we approached ever closer to the otters own personal part of the river. My camera was in the pocket of my jacket, only accessible via a loud velcro flap 'typical'. As we drew within five feet the otter looked at us for a second, as if in bewilderment, then slipped quietly and gracefully into his watery underworld, his fur, like dark silk mirrored the surface of the water. We watched as it slipped under us and away, a ring of bubbles appearing every couple of feet as it eased it self to the far bank. He seemed to stay with us for a while, every now and then we would catch sight of his black head as it poked out of the water to take a look.

After the wildness of this part of the river, man takes over again, and the river runs broad and straight, it also starts to show the first signs of tidal rise and fall. At a place called Camphire a large stone build bridge used to cross hear, but was knocked to make way for a more modern ugly mass concert one to take the rigors of modern day traffic. About half a mile beyond this bridge the River Bride comes to an end as her waters meet and mingle with that of the mighty River Blackwaters. The full effect of the new river soon takes hold as we enter her. The force of the water rushing out with the tide swept us along, as exposed mud flap where flocks of waders seemed to appear out of no where rose up out of the retreating waters.

We followed the river past vast bastions of rock that once held fortified castle's and long since destroyed Abby's. The splashes of sea trout erupted unpredictably around us as we were lost in the vastness of her water. Small stone built quay's all hiding rotting hulls of wood built craft seemed to be on every sheltered bend, and the dark angular silhouette of cormorants would glide low over the waters edge, then come to rest on some perch and watch, wings stretched out, Christ like as we paddled past.

Our rendezvous point with the car was at a place called TempleMichael. This was once the sight of a fortified house belonging to a local Irish clan leader. The House/castle was attacked by the Protestant land owners and the leader of the Clan held out against them by barricading himself in. The land owners then decided to lay siege to it, in order to starve him out. But locals loyal to him smuggled food by way of the river where upon he would lower a basket from the walls. The siege lasted months, and to teach him a lesson they destroyed the house and with the rubble built a protestant church on the sight.

Four hours of sheer bliss! the first of the season for Oli and me.

Command and Control = (Accountability)

Well, after two weeks doing battle with the worst scenario's that can be thrown at a fireman, I'm back.
An explosion in a chemical factory, an acetylene bottling plant fire, a massive wild fire surrounding a church full of children at sunday school, a chemical spill with toxic cloud, a collision between a loaded school bus and a truck delivering bottled gas, a fire on a super tanker at a dockside, and last but not least a fire in a whiskey distillery (Jamersons) in Midleton, which just happens to be next door to where my son go's to college. It is quite frightening to think that three months ago I was just an ordinary fireman just going about my duties as a medic or a breathing apparatus team leader. Now with these two bars on my shoulder comes great responsibility. The above scenario's are based on worst case, but all have happened, or could happen, and my response as overall officer in command are based on my crew being first on scene. As first officer on scene I could conceivably be in charge of the whole incident for at least the first hour, we call this the golden hour. The decisions made within that hour will have a huge bearing on the incident, and of the lives of not just my crews, but of the public as well. Am I up to it? I hope so. According to the records I finished in the top ten per cent on the coarse. The computers say that I kept all my crew members alive, which is good. However it also says that I didn't manage to save all the members of public, or prevent all the fatalities, but the numbers were kept below the expected norm!
It is odd too think of someone's husband,wife,son,daughter, as a number, or to say that they are one of the expected norm! I suppose it is only human nature to dehumanize the unthinkable by giving it a number, one in ten, one in every fifty, the expected norm! etc, etc, but people tend to forget, or at least don't want to be reminded that these numbers have faces, have lives, have loves, have families and homes that they are expected to go home to at night. My only hope is that I can do my best for all of them if and when the unthinkable happens.

I'm off too Clonmel.

Sorry all those in blog land, I am off on my next adventure into the unknown, and will be off the cyber thing' for the next two weeks! For those that are interested I am one of only eighteen that have been selected to go on a Junior Officers coarse from around the country and the only one from County Waterford. This coarse is designed to give the officer in charge of an incident the latest up-to-date knowledge in keeping his crew and the public safe. This can be highlighted this week with the sad deaths of two fire fighters from England, who died fighting a fire in an apartment block, who were hit by a delayed back draught, (my opinion). Also a little nearer home by the deaths of two kayakers caught in a weir not two hundred yards from a fire station in Portlaw County Waterford! This coarse is designed to test  our leadership, our knowledge, and our skill, while teaching us hopefully how to minimize risk. It should also give me an opportunity to learn new skills from my peers on the coarse some of which I know will have been in the service a lot longer than I have.
It is also designed to show us how to teach these new skills to our own crews, as well as best practice when it comes to designing imaginative and realistic training for our crews while keeping them safe at the same time. I am looking forward to completing this coarse as it is a huge advantage  when it comes to the next promotion step on the ladder, and I'm aiming high!

Victory In Youghal.

A while back (see  'to Oliver' post) I described how my son won a place on his college rugby team. Well, on Wednesday afternoon in front of a crowd of over a hundred, which included both sets of his Grandparents he and his team eclipsed even their wildest dreams.
Youghal Rugby football pitch sits on top of a hill that overlooks an ancient walled Harbor town, once owned by Sir Walter Raleigh, and has views onto the Mountains that I have spent a lot of time on recently putting out fires. The occasion, The Munster College Final, the teams, Midleton JCT's V Newtown, Weather bright, pitch soft.
Before the whistle both teams formed a huddle as the two captains fired up their respective men, then in silence each man took up his position, faces bristling with anticipation, and the eagerness of youth. The whistle was met by a wall of noise from the Midleton supporters, and the battle was on.

The first five minutes saw Newtown test the Midleton defence, as wave after wave of attacks were seen off in scenes reminiscent of the Spartans at Thermopylia. Then out of nowhere Midleton made a break down the right hand side, the forwards rucked and mauled in perfect unison, each man picking up the ball and driving on, then came the mistake! The Newtown number eight put his hands on the ball whilst off his feet, Penalty!!! Up stepped the Midleton captain and number ten, and with a sweet right foot put the ball over the bar from thirty-five yards, 3-0 Midleton. All over the pitch each man had his own battle with his opposite number, Oliver was no different. As Midleton's open side flanker (No.7) it was his job to carry the ball into contact and set up a maul, it was whilst doing so that his opposite number decided to give him some extra treatment, in the form of an elbow to the face. His nose took the impact and blood freely began to fall. In rugby if you have a blood injury you must go off! Until it is stemmed. Oliver with clever use of his second rows shirt and shorts in the Scrum managed to hide the blood from the Ref, and when the perpetrator of the crime reported it to the ref, there was no blood freely running so he was able to stay on. 

Five minutes later saw the same man with the ball running at Oliver, and in front of the partisan Midleton crowd saw Oliver make a tackle that completely upended his man, that won the applause of his peers, and of his Headmaster in the crowd, but more importantly won the ball for his team. Off this tackle the ball was fed out to the Midleton back line that went wide to the right, then as the Newtown defence were massing on that side saw an inside pass back onto the left hand side and into the gap that had been created by Oliver's tackle. That was all that was needed for the smallest man on the pitch, Midleton's wing, who had bright yellow boots. These boots hid the fact that he really had golden feet, for he is the quickest fifteen year old I have ever seen. His speed caught the Newtown boys napping and with two minuets to go in the first half he scored the games only try. 8-0 Midleton, The number ten then made this10-0 as he converted from twenty-two yards.

The second half started much the same, but the Newton boys were on a mission! They rampaged across the pitch and broke through the Midleton lines on numerous occasions. After wave after wave the Midleton defence finally broke down and gave away a penalty in front of the posts, and the Newtown Number ten stepped up and slotted the ball over the bar, 10-3. The Midleton boys answered the call of the crowd and rallied around, the forwards once again controlling the ball at the breakdown. The Midleton full back controlled the ball from behind catching high ball after high ball, and sending it back down the pitch with interest, and great accuracy. The Newtown boys were beginning to panic, and as another Midleton break went down the right they committed another penalty, and again the number ten in Midleton blue and black sent the ball over the post, 13-3. the game went on and as the minutes ticked by hundreds of voices began to count down the seconds, then as the ball was won off the back of the scrum by the scrum half, he saw the ref look at his watch and promptly kicked the ball out, game over! THEN!

Came the pitch invasion, the players had no chance of escape from the hoards of excited Midleton pupils and staff as they were swamped. Oliver's hand can be seen raised triumphantly, finger pointing sky ward. Thirty-two years is a long time to wait for any College to bring a title back, especially a college that prides itself on its Rugby.

As with any final, there has to be a loosing team, the Newtown team had put up a good fight, but were beaten for pace and fitness in the end, and the better team won. For the players who took part this will be a day they will never forget.  For the people who watched, we will never forget either.

Even Mum gets a hug!

That winning feeling!

Oliver bloodied' but happy with Jackies parents who came from England to watch.

The team! and happy Coach.

The spell is broken.

The cold dry spell has finally been broken. The Irish spring has arrived. For the last couple of weeks we have had more Mountain fires than I would care to remember and last night it began to rain which should bring them to an end. This has been a hard season, three of the crew got burnt, me included! Not serious burns rather more like loosing your eye lashes and eye brows and a bit of fringe, with some superficial reddening of the skin, or the odd blister.

I suppose the toll is harder on the families. Take mine for example. It got to be a station joke that whenever my wife cooked a roast dinner that we would be called out just as I sat down to eat it, this had a knock-on effect of her wanting to sit down and enjoy a nice dinner together so she would cook another one on another day! Same thing! Six times this happened. So when it came to her birthday meal which my son was home from school for with his girlfriend visiting, I decided not to let Jackie cook just incase, and ordered a nice Chinese,  only to have the lovely beef in Black bean sauce put onto my plate and with my taste buds exploding with anticipation took the first mouthful. Thats all I got to have of that, and it's not good for your digestive system if you eat it cold for breakfast!

Each years mountain fire season however refreshes my memory banks with renewed enthusiasm for the mountains at night. There is something that touches me deep inside, the silence, the vast skies, the stars. At night after the light of the fire is out and you sit and rest on a tuft of Un-burnt heather your senses somehow become even more aware of the landscape around you and the different effects of moonlight and shadow. Sound in the absence of light seems to become more amplified, and above the smell of ash you can catch the perfume of the small pink flowers of the heather. Over the years I have been the pathfinder on the mountains to our crew, quite a lot of responsibility! They will follow me down the mountain back to the road or track where the engine was left, or where we can get it to pick us up from. I do this by night vision only, no torches! I have tried to explain about the rods and cones that make up the shapes of the light sensitive end of the human eye but it tends to fall on deaf ears.
The tracks that wild animals make have been laid down over hundreds of years, and if you know what to look for you can see them light the way for you. On one occasion it was a full moon that lit the way on a cold cloudless night, and the light shone silver on the surface of the tiny spring that I was following, and the moon shadows fell magically over dead land or depressions which we stayed clear of. If you relied on torches all this magic would disappear in a man made orange glow, the kind that hides the stars over every town and city even on the clearest nights. You would become reliant on this glow rather than your senses. You would miss out on the feel of the changing geology under foot, the different textures of the bog, the subtle hollow ways through the waist high heather made by generations of sheep, the wool of which shines out like cats eyes snagged on branches, not a golden fleece, but moon silver.

So I bid farewell to my beloved mountains, even if it's a temporary one. The next time we will be up it will be usually to the sad sight of sheep with lambs that have been caught out by the flames of careless campers or pick-knickers with portable barbecue's, or to the drastic cry of the Hen harriers as they circle over head as the flames and smoke engulf their nesting site. In a way I hope that it remains wet for the spring to enable the wild life to recover from the ravages of man, and for us to recover from the exertion of this years busy mountain season.

Trials, Tribulations, and car crashes!

You're trying to imagine the scene that will greet you as you speed along the road to the crash. The first signs suddenly light up in the headlights as they reflect back through the fog, some debris and a bit of wall, some glass, oddly a single shoe, and then the long black line of rubber that terminates at the twisted reck of the car. A person is walking around as if in a dream, small splashes of blood already drying to a crust, speckle his aspirin white face, and he is preoccupied looking for his iphone. Beyond him you can here the screams of people in pain, and other people in shock trying to pull their friend, their brother, their sister,mother, father, son, or daughter, out of the wreckage, not realizing the dangers of spinal injury. What looks like an old sack lies on the road at odd angles with hardly any identifying features save for one hand that lies almost severed in the near perfect round of body fluid. In one of the cars you can see a young man slumped over the steering wheel, his ears are blue, in the other car a young girl is screaming in pain her legs are trapped by the dashboard of the car that has crushed around them and pinned them in, her four year old son lies motionless and quiet, still strapped into his baby seat in the back.
You are in charge of a team of five men, what do you do first?

This is a scenario that fire brigades all round the world sadly have to deal with every day. As more cars are on the roads the number of accidents are on the increase every year. To try and combat the number of deaths that happen to people who become trapped in their vehicles, or suffer serious spinal injury resulting in full paralysis by either improper extrication procedure, or good willed help by the public. The fire brigades of the western world formed an organization dedicated to the standardization of best practice training around the globe in Extrication. Each year the participating countries hold a national team challenge day, where each brigade put forward their best team of five who then compete against each other. The challenge is on two timed scenario's, firstly a twenty minute challenge, one responsive casualty, with spinal injury, the second, a ten minute rapid extraction of an unresponsive, time critical casualty. Each of these are carried out and are assessed by three world assessors who are experts in the three main areas, Medical, Technical, and Leadership. The best three teams then go forward to represent their country in the World Championships, this year the Worlds are being hosted by Cork City here in Ireland. This weekend I took part representing my County.I have been the Waterford County team medic for three years now and managed to compete in one World Championship two years ago. Our team this year was made up of two new recruits to help them gain some valuable experience in RTC (Road Traffic Collision) training that they might not get otherwise, consequently we are not expecting a top three placing this year, but you never know!

I'm not the blonde!