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Close call at a medical call.
Not sure if all of you would think this is a close call, but I thought enough of it to have my partner submit it to firefighternearmiss.com and generate a Near Miss report.
We were dispatched to a medical call, person who fell. Dispatch advised us that all the doors were locked and the patient was in the middle of the living room. Once we got on scene we began our usual checks of the doors to verify the information we received. My partner at the time (he's 22) was all gung ho to force the door. We had PD with us to protect (legally) us if we had to force it. I hadn't had much of a chance to start checking the windows when one of the officers found the window next to the back door was open. What we were making entry into was an approximately 20 year old single wide mobile home. We got the window open as much as we could, pushed the sofa that was in front of the window enough so that my partner could crawl through and go open the door. After that the call proceeded normally, with our patient being transported.
What made this a near miss in my eyes was a comment that my partner made on the way back to the station. He said, "You know what I forgot to do on that call?" I said, "What?" His reply shocked me, as I hadn't thought of it before either. He said, "I forgot to sound the floor before I went through the window." for those of you who have never really had to deal with a mobile home, they are built worse than modern residential construction. By that I mean the materials, not necessarily the construction methods. After all, they are built to be as light as possible, to make them easier to move. The floors are generally made of pressboard, at least they were at the time this house was built. Pressboard is nothing more than sawdust and glue. If it gets wet, it falls apart. And seeing as how this was right under a window, the floor could have been damaged and not be visible under the carpet.
How many times do we go on medical calls and not think about little things like this that are second nature on a fire call? I feel a lot of it has to do with mindset and complacency. We are all guilty of this at one time or another, and someone says something, or we do something that makes us realize that something we take for granted could reach up and get us at the most inopportune time.
Remember Rule #1: Go Home in One Piece at the end of your shift. After all, Murphy never takes a day off, so we have to be ever vigilant that he doesn't get us.
We were dispatched to a medical call, person who fell. Dispatch advised us that all the doors were locked and the patient was in the middle of the living room. Once we got on scene we began our usual checks of the doors to verify the information we received. My partner at the time (he's 22) was all gung ho to force the door. We had PD with us to protect (legally) us if we had to force it. I hadn't had much of a chance to start checking the windows when one of the officers found the window next to the back door was open. What we were making entry into was an approximately 20 year old single wide mobile home. We got the window open as much as we could, pushed the sofa that was in front of the window enough so that my partner could crawl through and go open the door. After that the call proceeded normally, with our patient being transported.
What made this a near miss in my eyes was a comment that my partner made on the way back to the station. He said, "You know what I forgot to do on that call?" I said, "What?" His reply shocked me, as I hadn't thought of it before either. He said, "I forgot to sound the floor before I went through the window." for those of you who have never really had to deal with a mobile home, they are built worse than modern residential construction. By that I mean the materials, not necessarily the construction methods. After all, they are built to be as light as possible, to make them easier to move. The floors are generally made of pressboard, at least they were at the time this house was built. Pressboard is nothing more than sawdust and glue. If it gets wet, it falls apart. And seeing as how this was right under a window, the floor could have been damaged and not be visible under the carpet.
How many times do we go on medical calls and not think about little things like this that are second nature on a fire call? I feel a lot of it has to do with mindset and complacency. We are all guilty of this at one time or another, and someone says something, or we do something that makes us realize that something we take for granted could reach up and get us at the most inopportune time.
Remember Rule #1: Go Home in One Piece at the end of your shift. After all, Murphy never takes a day off, so we have to be ever vigilant that he doesn't get us.
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