Annual Members' Meeting Thursday Dec 7, 7pm

This announcement has been up for awhile, but here's the formal portion of the agenda that has to do with election of officers, members, and the choice of a Firefighter of the Year, 2006. Please make every effort to attend!

Announcement
Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department
Annual Corporation Meeting of the Members
Thursday, Dec 7 2006, 7pm

Agenda: Elect WVFD Officers and new Board Members, choose Firefighter of the Year for 2006, and vote on proposed bylaw amendment.

I. Nominating Committee

Wayne Hughes (Chair)
Ed Frey
Jim Kitchens
Lisa Vaughan
Bill Cosgrove (Community Representative)

II. Elections

A. WVFD Officer Nominees for 2007

1. Fire Chief (one position, one nominee):
Mike Geraci

2. Assistant Fire Chief (one position, one nominee):
Ed Frey

3. Treasurer (one position, one nominee):
Cary Fordyce

4. Secretary (one position, one nominee):
Lisa Vaughan

B. New Board Members for 2007:

1. Outside Board Members (two positions):

Bill Cosgrove (1 year)
Jerry Ledbetter (2 years)

2. Non-Officer Firefighter Board Members (two positions):

Jim Kitchens
Glenn Galau

C. Firefighter of the Year 2006

III. Amendment to the Bylaws (Change the date of the Annual Directors’ Meeting to schedule on the same date (first Thursday of December) as the Annual Corporation Members’ Meeting):

ARTICLE IV, DIRECTOR MEETINGS, Section 1: Annual meetings. The annual meeting of the directors of this corporation shall be held on the (first) Thursday of (December) each and every year except if such day is a legal holiday, then and in that event, the Board of Directors shall fix the day but it shall not be more than two weeks from the date fixed by these Bylaws. The Board of Directors shall set the time and place. Notices of the annual meeting shall be sent out by the Secretary to each Board member, postmarked two weeks in advance.

Search and Rescue

Last night, Nov 16, was our regular "Third Thursday" training session.

The days are ending early now, and who knows who can get lost in the woods, innocently wandering about and then caught unawares by the setting sun?

Stalwart Lisa was our search and rescue target, and (bless her heart) stayed out in the woods in mid-40s temps with only her cell phone for warmth and comfort for at least an hour and half while we cycled through six pairs of search and rescue teams. Cell phones are, at least, useful for *something*, but Ed had told her not to use it. Poor Lisa was getting colder by the minute.

We were aided in our task by the thermal imaging camera (although I found her once with a regular flashlight). This is an utterly cool device, with a neat panel that shows the field of view and all warm objects lit up like ghosts. Pan it through the woods, and Lisa shows up like a tiny snowman, though paling every time, someone said, a hundred feet away. Look up at the sky and the slightly warmer clouds actually glow a bit against the colder black sky. Look at Deputy Chris's running prowler, and it looks like it just dropped in from "Repo Man".

We did finally find Lisa, twelve times, and in the meantime the rest of us enjoyed chatting in the considerably warmer firehouse. Finally someone asked, shouldn't we go out and bring Lisa back in? Not all training sessions have to be grueling sweaty work.

--Wayne

Nursing the Trucks

Up until a few months ago we had training once a month, on the third Thursday. And we still do.

Our second Thursday training session was suggested a few months ago by Mike as a supplemental training session, and what a good idea that has turned out to be. We really need more than once a month of training, and the trucks and equipment need attention more than once a month.

So last Thursday we did nursing, and the attendance was very good, along with Scott who attended for the first time.

There are situations where you need a water-filled truck to hook up with another firetruck to supply water to it, and that was what we figured out how to do. Watching the several wizards work to hook everything together is a lot of fun, but the first trial hooking a 2.5" hose between trucks and attempting to actively pump from one to the other didn't work so well.

So the wizards thought about it and tried again. This time it was a 6" hose, and they let the second truck pull water through the hose as needed, and that worked very well indeed. I admit I'm not completely certain I could reproduce what they figured out but that's why they're the wizards and I'm not - I do understand the essentials though, which is - just tell me what to do.

Training isn't always cut and dried - maybe it's never cut and dried. It's someone noticing that we REALLY need to figure out how to do something that might arise, and then just doing it. Sometimes it's just a thought and other times it comes about because of a previous call where it became obvious we needed to know how. With the watermaster, learning how to use it most effectively has become more and more a part of training, and that's the way it should be.

And then we did the chores, which was to make sure the tanker was filled with water before we left for the evening. A good hot time was had by all.

Tomorrow is our next training session. You should be there.

-- Wayne

Burning Down the House

Well, that was interesting.

Yesterday was a structure fire training course in Thomson, Georgia, an hour away. Five of us from our own Wolfskin VFD here in Oglethorpe County left at 6am and made the trip there without event. I very reluctantly elected not to take the camera, not knowing the various strategies, tactics, and situations involving this destructive Saturday, and I wish I had. It would have been doable. Many were the cell phones going off recording the events, and I don't have one of those little devices from hell, either.

Our Wolfskin contingent was certainly in the upper age cohort - late 40s and up - and hey, how about some of you younger folks!, but no less enthusiastic. Most of the couple dozen students were in their twenties, maybe a few thirty-year-olds. But they took good care of us, made us do everything, and spared us no disciplinary rod when we screwed up, which we did. We felt sort of like firefighting nobles, of some kind.

The two condemned houses were frame ca 1950s shotgun houses on the edge of Thomson, and part of the training was to prepare them during the morning. Ventilating, packing the demo rooms with wood pallets, knocking down porches. I was relieved that we weren't required to do any roof work - I am definitely NOT my best at heights even without a lot of gear on.

You'll recall that, as a result of support from our generous community, we have new PPE (protective clothing) and SCBA (breathing apparatus), and that itself took what we figured was 20 lb off the total carry weight of the old stuff, but with everything on still ran 25-30 lb. Just taking it on and off twenty times during the course of the day was valuable training - all that stuff really does need to be put on *perfectly* and many are the straps and knobs and zippers that have to be adjusted and turned. We ended up getting our tanks filled three times during the course of the day.

We had three major excursions into the buildings during set fires. We were divided into groups of four or five and stood as backup with another hose for the group going in before us. When it was our turn we all went in crawling on knees pulling the fire hose, and went to the fire. The head person knocked the fire down, we backed out on our knees, rotated the head person to the back, and then did it again until everyone had done it. Our knees are not thanking us this morning.

The first excursion was basically a (brief) classroom inside one of the rooms, where we kneeled and were told how things were going to be done. Then with 15 of us crowded into the room, breathing tank air, they lit the fire with a massive propane torch. I will have to say it was a new experience to watch the flames spreading rapidly throughout the room and advancing along the 7-foot ceiling. The instructor demonstrated correct use of the hose to knock the fire back, and then incorrect use, which produced a roomful of very hot steam and smoke, a whiteout. It was pretty amazing how hot things go even through the PPE.

The last two were the actual group sessions, and then it was time to let the house go completely. The second house followed early in the evening and was much more interesting with standup nozzles creating water curtains between the burning house and two nearby houses, and the power lines close by. The heat from that house at its peak was enough to drive us back 100 feet or more.

We were pretty lucky to have this particular training opportunity, which was arranged and organized very well indeed by the Thomson Fire Department, with observers and ICS staff from the Georgia Fire Academy, Georgia Forestry Commission and other various, sundry alphabetized agencies. Normal training at the Fire Academy involves a permanent "burn building" which just uses gas jets and stacked pallets in a burn-proof room, over and over.

There were two fire trucks stationed on the scene all day, with a bewildering array of hoses of all sizes we'd laid out in the morning, somehow. There was a rehab station at an ambulance staffed with EMTs. We had to have blood pressure and pulse rate taken before and after each excursion, and it was made clear that anyone who fell above a particular number would absolutely not participate. The rehab station was stocked with an apparently infinite supply of water and some gatorade-like substance. The attention to safety was amazing and was evident at each step, with the ICS support staff and instructors actually outnumbering the students. Peekholes with hoses had been carved out of the eaves of our training house, with ladders and hoses there to put out any fire that we were not able to handle. That's attention to safety.

In an environmental sense I suppose it's just not a good thing, although I imagine the likely alternatives of disposable would have been no better - landfill for the demolished house remains, for instance. We just got lucky.

And yes, I'm sore, and my knees hurt. But no burns! The other WVFD fellows are sore too, but we're all intact. Ours has always been a good, congenial group - I'm fond of the other four anyway, though we're quite different from each other. Normally I'm very chary of the bonding word, but there's no doubt that it applies here.

Very special thanks to our neighbors in the Wolfskin Community for supporting us. We couldn't do it without you.

-Wayne