Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department

EVOC Training : 28, 29 October 2011

2011-11-01T01:52:00.045-04:00

Oglethorpe County had its first Emergency Vehicle Training Course (EVOC) on Friday and Saturday this past weekend, 28 and 29 October 2011. The training and testing was done by the Volunteer Firemen Insurance Service (VFIS). VFIS has long been the insurer of the Fire Departments, Rescue Squad, EMT, and First Responders in the county and provides many educational services to its clients. This one exceeds NFPA 1002 (Standard for Fire Apparatus Driver/Operator Professional Qualifications) and is free. It was a three hour instruction on Friday evening (kindly hosted by the Oglethorpe County Farm Bureau) and a practical exam on Saturday morning at the Oglethorpe County High School. The intent was to teach firefighters how to responsibly drive pumpers and tankers and to test their ability to drive and park in very close quarters.

Our instructor was Steven Smith. Steven is affiliated with VFIS/SE as an agent of Adamson Insurance Agency, Inc., of Lineville, Al. He is based in Jasper, GA and is also a volunteer firefighter and an EMT. This was about the fourteenth EVOC course that he had taught, so he was able to concentrate on the important issues of safety, responding to calls, and driving skills. A very good instructor and perfect gentleman.

Attendance was less than hoped for but we made up for it with enthusiasm. The students were Russell Utley of Maxeys, recent members Chris Tittle and Trandam Tittle of Pleasant Hill, Michael Patman of Vesta, and Ed Frey, Wayne Hughes, Charleen Foott, David Hill, and Glenn Galau of Wolfskin. Lisa Vaughan of Wolfskin helped secure and transport traffic cones from F4 Sanitation, Crawford Water Works, and Oglethorpe County to add to those loaned from fire departments.

Highlights from Friday night: 1) Do a Circle of Safety, a walk around the vehicle, before moving an engine; 2) Never back up without a spotter; 3) Code 3 lights and siren should only be used when responding to structure fires, wild land fires that threaten a structure, and cardiac incidents; 4) Never exceed the speed limit; 5) Obey all traffic laws; 6) Lights and sirens only request right of way; it must be granted by traffic and pedestrians; 7) Come to a complete stop at all controlled intersections showing red signals; 8) In such cases, stop at every lane as you cross the intersection; 9) Do not assume a driver has granted you right-of-way until you meet their eyes; 10) At a highway incident, position the truck between you and traffic from behind and the side as protection from rubber-neckers who drive into the incident; and 11) Everyone is a safety officer.

The driving course on Saturday had four parts: 1) Drive forward through two gates offset from each other; 2) Drive forward down a very narrow lane, park 18 inches from a wall, and back out; 3) Drive serpentine forward and then backward through three cones; and 4) Drive backward and park 18 inches from a second wall. The cones were placed to provide only about four inches of clearance on each side of an average-width engine. For the record, the wheelbase and width (excluding mirrors) of our pumper is 157 and 95 inches and of our tanker is 219 and 98 inches, respectively.


(Left) Steven Smith, Russell Utley and Ed Frey place cones at measured intervals for the serpentine course. (Right) Steven Smith in good humor on a cold morning.

(Left) More setup. (Right) The fourth course: back up to the second wall.

(Left) Unused traffic cones. Love the party hats! (Right) Walking the course.

(Left) Walking the course. (Right) Final instructions and pep talk.

(Left) Ed Frey of Wolfskin through the first gate. (Right) Ed driving up the alley.

(Left) Ed forward through the serpentine. (Right) Ed backward through the serpentine.

(Left) Ed backing up to the second wall. (Right) Not nearly close enough.

(Left) Chris Tittle asks Ed Frey about a fitting. (Right) Russell Utley takes off.

(Left) Russell drives backward out of the alley. (Right) The party hat nearly gets squashed.

(Left) Russell goes forward through the serpentine. (Right) Mixed attention from the onlookers.

(Left) Wayne Hughes of Wolfskin in the second gate. (Right) Wayne going up the alley.

(Left) Wayne backing up to the second wall. (Right) Closer than Ed.

(Left) Chris Tittle of Pleasant Hill. (Right) Trandam Tittle of Pleasant Hill.

(Left) Charleen Foott of Wolfskin. (Right) Charleen not tipping the cone.

(Left) Michael Patman of Vesta. (Right) Michael backing up to the second wall.

(Left) Ed Frey goes for a second run. (Right) The Three Ladies.

Narrowbanding Update

2011-01-03T09:04:00.003-05:00

A Happy New Year to all.

The December plans for a Reprogramming Day to fulfill the narrowbanding mandate didn't happen. Sometime soon, but no time has been set as yet.

Our first business meeting is Thu Jan 6 at 7pm. All are welcome.

Narrowbanding and Unexpected Expenses

2010-12-21T07:44:00.002-05:00

One of our little volunteer firefighter annoyances - deadlines. Worse, deadlines for mandates from above. Compounding annoyances - deadlines for two completely different things that become confused.

There is a presumptive January 1, 2012 deadline that has to do with GFSTC, the Georgia Firefighter Standards and Training Council. This is currently in draft stage and tightens up requirements for compliant fire departments in Georgia. We'll dispense with that for now.

And then there is this one: narrowbanding.

For non-Federal public safety users of radio communication, the NPSTC, the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council is mandating "narrowbanding". The nationwide deadline for this is Jan 1 2013:

In December 2004, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced the requirement that all non-Federal public safety licensees operating 25 kHz radio systems in the 150-174 MHz and 421-512 MHz bands (the VHF and UHF bands) must migrate to more efficient 12.5 kHz (narrowband) channels by January 1, 2013.

(BTW, and also from NPSTC, here is a nice description of "narrowbanding." Here is another good summation of the mandate.)

That 2013 deadline for everyone else comes for us in Oglethorpe County on January 1 2011. That seems to be because our county-wide emergency dispatch moved the deadline up, probably because much-needed changes to the transmission towers were going to be made (hurrah!), and it was decided to just do everything at once. I do believe that at least two or three folks understood this - it just got lost to me, anyway, in the conflation by the other deadlines. And if the significance was lost to me, who listens pretty carefully, it probably got lost to others too.

So "sometime in December," and December is moving along pretty swiftly now, there will come a day being called "Reprogramming Day," when everyone brings down their radios and pagers for reprogramming to the new 12.5 kHz standard. I don't know how up to a two or three hundred radios and pagers over thirteen different fire departments are going to be reprogrammed all on one day, but that's for someone else to worry about. The reason we want to do this is that the county pays for reprogramming, provided it's done on that Day. (Apparently there will be a Makeup Day, also unscheduled.)

A few complications. Older pagers and radios may not be able to be reprogrammed. New reprogrammable ones will then have to be purchased, and unless the reprogramming costs are rescheduled, they have to be purchased NOW. The county will be paying for the reprogramming, provided it's done on the appointed day(s), but it will not be paying for replacements.

Fortunately our Motorola CP200 and HT750 radios can be reprogrammed, although we have a number that must be repaired first, and that means NOW. All of our truck radios, Motorola CM200s, can also be reprogrammed. For other commonly used radios, here is a list, from Railcom, of radios and pagers that can and cannot be reprogrammed.

Unfortunately for us, *this* poses a problem:

That's our pager, a Motorola Minitor IV, one of the more popular pagers. We have close to twenty of these, and they will not be able to be reprogrammed. No one else is going to want them (this is a *federal* mandate) and so onto the junkpile they go. We do have a couple of next generation Minitor V pagers, and those can be reprogrammed. We've ordered six more of these, and that's going to cost us in the neighborhood of $3000.

A couple months ago, we put out a newsletter, a very good one. We discussed how it might be used for a specific fundraising request, but no one could think of anything coming up immediately. In the interim we have received generous donations (and compliments), enough to pay for the newsletter and then some. But clearly this unexpected, and for us very large expense should have been the focus, and it somehow fell through the cracks.

So, if you'd like to contribute to the Pager Replacement Fund, we'd very much appreciate it. Our mailing address is PO Box 76, Arnoldsville GA 30619. You can call or email Wolfskin Chief Ed Frey (phone numbers and addresses in the right sidebar near the top) to confirm.

Annual Business Meeting December 2

2010-11-28T07:35:00.003-05:00

This is a formal announcement for our annual business meeting held on Dec 2, beginning at 6:30pm at the Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department station at 854 Wolfskin Road.

This is the complicated series of relatively quick meetings where we conduct old business, adjourn, elect a new board, adjourn, and elect the officers, and adjourn. I think we even have a fourth meeting of the new board, and then, guess what? We adjourn.

It's something of a spectacle, so it's always more fun than most.

It's also an event not to be missed by WVFD members, so we hope to see everyone there.

Sixth Annual Restoration Run

2010-11-21T07:39:00.001-05:00

Last year it was Glenn and I who took the bright red WVFD pumper to slow down traffic for the Fifth Annual Restoration Run in Crawford. This year's Sixth Annual Run, for the restoration of the Railroad Depot in Crawford, it was Fire Chief Ed and I who moved the pumper around. We spent the morning driving first to Smokey Road for the 5K run, and then for the 15K run to Crawford-Smithonia Road at Hargrove Lake Road, as we did last year. This year we stayed the full time at the Hargrove Lake Road, and Crawford VFD, probably, took care of the Old Mill Road placement.

It was 35 degF when we left the station at 6:45am - last year it was 39 deg, and the previous year it was apparently 28 deg. Historically it's never rained the day of the race, although the day after, last year, we did get 1.24".

Since last year's posts covered everything in detail, I'll just present a few of the highlights. Here's one non-negotiable:

And a little bit of local color, discovered impaled on the yard sale sign at Hargrove Lake Road, where all today's photos were taken.

We had a little bit of drama when Bad Dogs erupted out of a yard at the bottom of the hill. First they attacked the lead car, and then they went after the first two runners. State patrol was there within a couple of minutes, a very pleasant fellow, and safety was restored.

This gentleman, a distant third at the 7.5-mile mark where we sat, won first last year, when his shorts were blue (same shirt though!). I seem to have failed to get the number one and two runners at this point, but they were the ones attacked by the dogs in the previous photos.

Trick or Trunk

2010-10-30T23:53:00.012-04:00

Saturday evening was the Department's first Trick or Trunk. It was suggested by Lisa and it was advertized with a sign out front, a notice in The Oglethorpe Echo and of course in the 2010 Newsletter. Six of us dressed up to various extents and set up the engines and a few POVs by 6 pm. About 20-30 Trick or Trunkers came by, among them some old friends. Andy, a WVFD Firefighter on leave, also popped in for a few minutes!

Newsletter Mistake

2010-10-23T18:39:00.003-04:00

I'll take responsibility for this one, though I proofed the thing several times and didn't see it until it was too late: The phone number for one of our two community representatives is the locally familiar 742, not 752 as it appears in the newsletter.

We got ours today, through the mail. Did you?

The 2010 Newsletter

2010-10-21T21:51:00.014-04:00

Thursday afternoon completed the preparation of the Fall 2010 Report to the Wolfskin Community, a two-page brochure that will arrive in local mailboxes on Saturday. Assembly was finished earlier in the week; today it was adding the Oriental Red closures, the mailing labels, and finally the postage stamps for delivery to the US Post Office in Arnoldsville on Friday morning. We finished just in time to do our regular training for the week.

Click here for a 1.3 Mb pdf of the newsletter. The map has been revised to include recent changes in our automatic aid areas. It can be downloaded here as a 5.3 Mb pdf file with a native size of 36 x 48 inches. It should print just fine on any size paper. Please contact Glenn at galau@plantbio.uga.edu if you are interested in purchasing a larger copy of the map with a portion of the price to benefit WVFD. Specific options should shortly appear in the header under the 911 signs.

Testing the Water Master Fire Pump

2010-08-27T08:36:00.003-04:00

It's been a long time since I've made an actual post, although the blog information is updated frequently. There are various reasons for this, especially that I'm the only one who does posting, and I have other fish to fry too. And there are quite a few things to catch up on, and I hope to do so in the near future.

But this might be of interest to those who, like us, want to test the fire pump on a Water Master tanker. I did a lot of internet searching on the subject without success, although I did locate the current Water Master supplier, but we purchased ours in 2005 and the fire pump was added separately, which I understand is no longer the case. So for those who are in our situation, this might be helpful.

A few weeks ago we'd taken the pumper and the Water Master tanker up to a lake near Winterville to get them pump tested. You have to do this on an annual basis for satisfying insurance requirements for the class we're trying to achieve. The pumper did ok, but the Water Master tanker couldn't be tested. The guys doing the testing spent a couple of hours at it, but couldn't figure out how to draft and pump simultaneously, so that had to be put on hold.

The reason you have to draft (suck water out of a pond or lake) and discharge at the same time is that you have to maintain 1000 gallons per minute discharge for twenty minutes, so you need a larger body of water as your reservoir. The guys knew how to do the pumpers, because they're common and well known.

I tried to describe to them how I thought it could be done with the tanker, but they were reluctant to try it. In their defense there was a secondary issue that made them reluctant to proceed further. The manufacturers of the fire pump had neglected to include a test specification plate with all the pump info, so they couldn't assure themselves of what the pumping capacity was and were skeptical of our recollection that it was 1000 gal/min (it is). They don't want to burn out someone's fire pump, so that ended it.

Fire Chief Ed did have an indirect conversation through one of the test guys to the company that makes the Water Master tankers. I'm giving the third hand report, but the upshot was that simultaneous discharge and drafting (sucking water out of the lake) couldn't be done.

That just didn't seem right to me, so I devised a procedure for doing it, and last night we tested it out and it worked just fine.

Here is how we normally use the tanker (called a tender in the West - tanker is used to describe a plane or helicopter dropping water or other suppressant from the air).

The tanker is a modified septic tank sucker, with a big sealed 2500 gallon tank shown in red, sitting atop the truck. The fire pump pumps water out of the truck. There's a vent that you can open or close from a big panel with lots of switches and LEDs sitting between the driver and passenger seats. For the normal operation you keep the vent open, of course, for you do not want to develop a vacuum in the tank as water is pumped out of it.

Here is how we needed to operate the tanker. It's the same figure from above except that we also needed to pull water into the tank while we discharged. The main concern here was for pump testing, but in general we'd also need to do this for nursing other trucks when hydrants aren't present. In most parts of Oglethorpe County, hydrants aren't present, but there are little ponds and lakes around.

The big difference is that now we operate the fire pump with the vent *closed*, something you "never" do. As the fire pump pumps water out of the tank, a vacuum forms. This vacuum pulls water out of the lake to replace the water that has been removed from the tank.

And that's what we demonstrated last night. Very simple. We dumped water from the pumper into a drop tank to serve as our "lake." From the tanker in the second figure above, we put our 6" suction hose. We hooked up our discharge to the pumper, and turned the fire pump on. And it filled the pumper while immediately beginning a suction from the drop tank, just as predicted.

Once the pumper was full again, we hooked up the deck gun and repeated the process, discharging into the air, until we'd emptied the drop tank first, and then the tanker at 400 gal/min, keeping the rpm's low just in case there was a problem. Worked fine!

Now, in defense of the assertions that we couldn't accomplish the intended goal, I'll have to introduce a complication. The Water Master has a *second* pump, a vacuum pump, that is normally used to fill the truck from a lake on a one-time basis. With the vent closed, you turn the vacuum pump on, it removes the air from the tank, and the water comes in to replace it. Simple! That's how the ancestors of this truck clean out septic tanks, only there it isn't simply water that is sucked into the tank.

So I think the testing guys, who knew something about the tanker, and the manufacturer guys too, were fixated on using the vacuum pump and the fire pump at the same time to accomplish our needs, and their conclusion was that it couldn't be done. Maybe they were also blindsided a bit by the rule that you never use a fire pump with the tank vent closed. And to do what we did means you had to violate that rule.

We still haven't fully tested it, since to achieve the 1000 gal/min we'll have to rev up the fire pump rpm's at least 2.5 times higher than we tested it out at. But that's what the fire pump is built to do. So I can't see why that would be problem, unless the fire pump is doing a double duty that decreases its ability to discharge. And that's why we need a test spec plate, so we know the maximum rpm's we can safely operate it at, as well as the gallons per minute it's expected to deliver under normal conditions.

To repeat: that's also why we need to get that test plate, hint hint.

I really wish I'd taken my camera - it was pretty impressive when we were pulling water out of the drop tank into the tanker, discharging it into the pumper, and then using the pumper's fire pump to return it back into the drop tank. We had a full circuit of water moving, with the physics of gravity and atmospheric pressure completing a critical portion of that loop.

The Month of February

2010-02-26T08:17:00.001-05:00

Fire Calls:

2010 has been busy from the very beginning. Counting a Dec 30 2009 call for a chimney fire we've had eight calls. Just a few days left in February, and so maybe this is a premature summary especially since we have red-flag days today and tomorrow. Still, here are the four fire calls we've had in February.

Feb 4 brought a call to our own area of Wolfskin Road and Hutchins-Wolfskin Road - a vehicle overturn. The pumper was en route when the call was canceled - the vehicle occupants had apparently righted the car and fled the scene.

Feb 6, just after midnight, we were paged for a structure fire in downtown Arnoldsville. This was a multidepartmental event for a house fire. While there was damage, the house was saved. Five departments, including ours, were involved here, and we got home around 3am.

Feb 14 brought a mid midmorning brush fire off Old Edwards Road. The pumper was canceled en route when the initial blaze was determined to be much less than it initially appeared, and was brought under control.

Feb 21 brought a midmorning page, late in the event, for water for a structure fire north of Crawford. We had the tanker near the scene when the call was cancelled. Sounded like at least nine or ten departments were called.

Training:

We had three training meetings in February. You can always get details from the WVFD Training and Meetings links on the right sidebar - here are the ones for 2010, so far.

We've been working on hoselays for the pumper, and established a reverse lay of about 550 feet of 3" hose on the pumper bed. The Feb 11 training involved discussion of the Feb 6 structure fire, and the annual inspection by GFS&T, which we easily passed. The last training meeting got us back into nursing operations from tanker to pumper. We also hefted charged 3" hoses for attack, and solved a problem with the tanker panel controls.

Here's something important for any of us who are going to drive and operate the tanker:

The tanker has a vacuum/pressure pump, which we use mainly in the vacuum mode for drafting. For pressure, we use the fire pump addition that then Fire Chief Phyllis Jackson had the foresight to have added to the tanker. Last Thursday, we were puzzled at being unable to increase pressure at the fire pump panel using the new fangled pressure pad digital controls. The solution was to turn off the fire pump, shut down the electrical system at the battery switch, wait a few seconds, then turn everything back on. A reboot of the system was apparently required. Everything worked fine then. It's the equivalent of pulling the plug, and letting the digitals sort themselves out.

We've had ongoing tests of our handheld radio communications on our Wolfskin channel. A number of radio batteries (lithium ion) are 4-6 years old, and only hold a charge for 30 hours or so, at rest. Newer batteries hold charge for a week or so. We've established that we can hear each other within a couple of miles from inside homes, and used this capability effectively several times, during the Feb 14 brush fire, for instance. At one point one of us was able to relay a message to another who could not hear the original message.

And aside from some fairly significant departmental business that others can write about, that seems to be what's been going on in February.

The Last Two Years

2010-01-23T07:25:00.003-05:00

For the record:

Since 2008 we've had 25 business meetings, once a month, faithfully.

We've had 75 training meetings, just about every Thursday of every month.

And we've had 29 pageouts. In 2008 we had 8 calls, and everyone agreed that was a very quiet year. In 2009 we had more than twice that, 18 calls. And so far in January 2010 we've had 3.

Thanks to everyone who attended these. There was not a one that we did not respond to.

And congratulations and welcome back to Josh. He completed eight weeks of professional firefighter training at Forsyth over Sep, Oct, and Nov, and was awarded the most valuable student of the course by his instructors and colleagues. In January he completed three weeks of EMT training in North Carolina, a grueling seven days a week from before sunup to after sundown. Spectacular.

Red Letter Dates in History

2009-12-13T05:57:00.005-05:00

Shall we look in the Book, hmmm?

Glenn unearthed three volumes of old Wolfskin Fire Department minutes. I shook out the mouse coprolites and selected a few entries.

From the Oct 1978 meeting discussing the formation of WVFD. Note the last paragraph. The more things change, the more they stay the same! Do you know, they used to call themselves Wolfskinners.

Here are some nice tidbits from Nov 29 1982. The first truck? The very file cabinet from which Glenn recovered these records, "kept in a safe place" all these years! And we still have that desk, too, though it's lost one drawer sometime in the last 27 years. No telling what was in it.

Early safety issues; and oh that barbecue shelter. We finally filled it in two years ago.

O tempora, o mores!

An early attempt at inventory, June 4 1992. And look who makes their first appearance! I believe we had just completed our training so we'd been around for six months already.

Astute observers will notice the doubly crossed out name.

Annual Smokey Road Parade

2009-12-12T16:00:00.002-05:00

Saturday, 12 December 2009, was the annual parade down Smokey Road in Crawford. This year Queen Lewis took over the directorship from Delbra Favors and the route of the parade was reversed, but otherwise it was the usual event. Mostly Fire Engines, Ambulances, Rescue, Sheriff, Muscle Cars and an odd float or two. There was an empty Athens Transit bus towards the end of this year's parade.

The local Fire Departments of Crawford, Arnoldsville, Devils Pond, Beaverdam, and Wolfskin each brought a pumper. I was unable to identify the second pumper in line. It was probably a second Crawford pumper but my apologies to another department if was theirs.

Josh Adams rode the back of the Wolfskin pumper. Brian Mixon drove and Jack Adams and I were passengers.

We Have a Board

2009-12-04T07:12:00.001-05:00

We have a Board!

Our annual business meeting was held last night. The bylaws, largely boilerplate tailored to the specific needs of the department, require *three* meetings with specific agendas. The arcana were detailed by Glenn, our parliamentarian, in the post below and occasion moments of mirth as we inevitably mess up.

So here are the members of the Board of Directors for 2010:

Chief	Ed Frey
Asst Chief	Wayne Hughes
Treasurer	Cary Fordyce
Secretary	Lisa Vaughan
Community Member	Alan Kotch
Community Member	Bill Cosgrove
Firefighter Member	Brian Mixon
Firefighter Member	Jim Kitchens

In addition to electing a slate of the Board of Directors, the second meeting, of firefighter members, voted for Firefighter of the Year, and this year that turned out to be me. Brian will turn his tiara over to me in February.

In other news, Ed unearthed several old disks that contained some historical training and officer records dating back to the department's inception in 1982. I've placed these on the right sidebar with the option of an excel download or a webpage format. I've added the appropriate meta tags so that these files don't get indexed by search engines. There are some holes in both documents so please feel free to email me with additions and corrections.

And I would guess it was John Wampler, bless his heart, who reconstructed these records.

Annual Meeting Time!

2009-11-23T01:23:00.013-05:00

The Firefighter Members and the Board of Directors of The Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department, Inc. will have their December Monthly and Annual Meetings on December 3rd at the Fire Station on Wolfskin Rd. The following is the agenda based on the Notice in The Oglethorpe Echo, the Schedule of Events above, the Bylaws, and records of earlier years. It may not seem logical, but it gets things done more or less in compliance with the Bylaws.

6:30 pm. December Monthly Meetings of the Firefighter Members and the Board of Directors, as a Committee of the Whole

1) Routine Reports
2) Old Business
3) Unfinished Business
4) New Business
5) Adjournment

7:00 pm. Annual Meeting of the Firefighter Members

1) Elect seven of the eight Directors of the New Board for the next calender year. The Nominating Committee will present a slate of candidates and nominations from the floor are welcome. The openings include:

a) Four Directors elected from among the Firefighter Members, serving one-year terms, to replace Ed Frey (presently Chair and Fire Chief), Wayne Hughes (presently Vice-Chair and Assistant Fire Chief), Jim Kitchens, and Brian Mixon

b) One of the two Community Directors, serving a two-year term, to replace Bill Cosgrove (the other Community Director, Alan Kotch, continues the second year of his two-year term)

c) Two Directors from either Firefighter Members or from the Community, serving one-year terms, to replace Cary Fordyce (a Community Member, presently Treasurer) and Lisa Vaughan (a Firefighter Member, presently Secretary)
2) Elect from the Member Directors of the New Board a Chair/Fire Chief (to replace Ed Frey) and a Vice-Chair/Assistant Chief (to replace Wayne Hughes)
3) Elect The 2009 Firefighter of the Year
4) Any other Business that may properly be brought before the Members
5) Adjournment

7:30 pm. Annual Meeting of the Board of Directors
1) Election of Treasurer (presently Cary Fordyce) and Secretary (presently Lisa Vaughan) of the New Board of Directors
2) Any other Business that may properly be brought before the Board
3) Adjournment

Posted by Glenn Galau

Wolfskin Development Plan

2009-09-16T11:10:00.003-04:00

Request for suggestions:

On the right sidebar, there's an entry under WFD Plan, which is a word doc that you can download to view. This is Bill's most recent (Sep 1, 2009) reworking of the WFD Development Plan we've been working on since January. Please do look at it and make comments or suggestions.

(Or you can click here.)

This is a plan by function, rather than by date. At some point we'll probably have an alternative document in the form of a 1-3-5 year plan that is consistent with the current one. What we found was that for our specific needs it was better to first carve out our various functions along with officers in charge. Too many functions were ongoing, and didn't really fit a 1-3-5 year plan (recruitment, for instance, or fundraising). There was a sense that a 1-3-5 year plan should be more visionary, addressing special projects, rather than messing with day to day ongoing operation.

So it's a start. With that context, we'll update as we get suggestions and incorporate them. Suggestions can emailed or added in the form of comments to this post.

Thanks to Ed, Lisa, Phyllis, Wayne, and to Bill who heads the committee. Actually there were several times when just about everyone sat in to offer suggestions, so let's thank everyone.

September Update

2009-09-06T07:08:00.007-04:00

First, I'm having some computer difficulties so the full September update may not appear for awhile.

Second, Brian Creech's very nice article on the Margaritaville appeared today in the Athens Banner-Herald.

Third, for Inactive Firefighters:

We're having to do inventory on our equipment. If you haven't attended a business meeting or training session, or attended a fire call in the last six months without notifying the fire chief, you are considered to be inactive. It's kind of a "duh" situation that we have to address - no offense intended.

So, we're asking all inactive firefighters holding outstanding equipment to either come by to turn in your equipment on the next two Thursday evenings (Sep 10 or Sep 17) after 6:30pm, or to contact Ed or Wayne (email addresses and phone numbers appear on the right sidebar) to work out a time to settle this issue.

The deadline for this is September 17 - emails have been sent out, and snail mail for those without email addresses. Of course we'd love to have formerly inactive firefighters return to activity, but regardless wish you all well. We just need that stuff back!

Goodbye to the Margaritaville

2009-08-25T10:21:00.004-04:00

I don't know how Wolfskin fire chief Ed ran across this little neon amusement, but we hung it on the door to the Margaritaville bay a couple of years ago. Googling shows it may have a connection to Jimmy Buffett, complete with parrot, but we'd named our beloved pumper long before any such discovery. It's a fitting introduction to the end of a long relationship.

For those who don't know who the Margaritaville is, she's our old pumper that we leased from Oconee County many years ago. She's a 1984 GMC/Chevy (thanks Brian!) with a somewhat checkered past. You can see why we call her the Margaritaville. The unconventional paint job was due to an earlier idea that lime green would be more visible than red, without the distraction to passersby. That idea seemed to go by the wayside fairly quickly.

She's been featured many times, for instance, here, or here and certainly no one in any of our 13 fire departments mistakes her for some other pumper. She's been a faithful and well-used engine and has taken us to many fire scenes.

But over the past couple of years she's become intermittently cranky. Or rather the reverse, since electrical problems that have plagued her for years have led to an increasing frequency of dead batteries and nonstarts. Wolfskin residents should know that a few WFD firefighters have spent a lot of time going back and forth to the station to hook up and unhook battery chargers to make sure she's startable. (Once she starts, she went every time!)

But all good things come to an end. It was painful to have to remove the decals that we took such pleasure in applying. Could anyone emote such sadness at a distance as Josh does here? I don't think so. Good job!

So it was that yesterday we said goodbye to our old Margaritaville. Ed, Josh, Brian, and I arrived at 3:30 last Thursday to begin the stripping process, removing all our equipment. Here's her bay, on the other side of the neon folly, and there are 1200 feet of 1.5 and 3 inch hose lying on the floor of the bay (but you've seen that before, last June, from the other end.

Brian took out our radio, flashlight chargers, and other equipment, and we brought in all the couplings, adapters, SCBAs, and other implements of destruction, and accumulated them in a large pile in the station.

It only took us a couple of hours, and at 5:30 Ed and Brian drove her away into the west for the last time, leaking water in the manner to which we had become accustomed.

And here's her replacement, arriving at 7pm.

By that time the rest of the crew had arrived, and we worked until nearly 10pm putting all the hose back on, and getting a good start on organizing the placement of other equipment. Brian installed the radio and flashlight chargers, tested them out, and found them good. Lisa, Phyllis, Jim, and David helped to get hose back on the truck and make it immediately ready. Glenn had stopped on his way over and picked up sustaining pizza. A merry time was had by all although some of us are going to feel a bit sore today after the monumental effort of taking heavy hose off and then replacing it. We don't do that every day.

The new pumper is actually a "new old" pumper. It's a 1987 Ford, with an FMC chassis, but has been scrupulously cared for. If you didn't know the real age, you'd still be able to figure it out - the side panel controls give it all away.

But it has a 1000-gallon water tank, compared to Mville's 750 gallons, and a good strong pump. And it starts! It has automatic transmission, as opposed to manual, and doesn't tend to run oncoming vehicles off the road by wandering from side to side. I'd argue that Mville was more generous in storage space, and that she had more in the way of strategic outlet ports, but since some of those no longer worked it would be a weak argument.

On the other hand, it doesn't have a personality quite yet, although the brakes are extremely squeaky and may be the nucleus of some kind of notoriety. It's red, of course, and there are those who find this to be a major asset, but I'm going to miss the margarita green.

(There are quite a few folks who worked hard to make sure this happened over the last few months. The new old pumper is a transfer from Oconee County, who values our mutual aid agreement over a section of southeast Oconee County and our responses to their mutual aid calls. The Boards of Commissioners of both Oglethorpe and Oconee County, along with the Oconee County Fire Department, and Fire Chief Bruce Thaxton, worked out the transfer, and we're very grateful to all of them.)

Fire Call Aug 19

2009-08-19T10:08:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Ed, Glenn, Brian, Wayne, David and Lisa for answering the page at 1:02am for the vehicle accident with fire. It was down below Maxeys off Hway 77 and was lighting the grassy roadside on fire.

Maxeys and Salem were initially called. We're the mutual aid for Maxeys, and Central called Wolfskin shortly after. We were at the station and enroute by 1:12 and the tanker was almost all the way down Hutchins-Wolfskin Road when we were 10-22'd. Back at the station at 1:44.

Two notes: I count six folks who dragged themselves out of bed at 1am, and were enroute within ten minutes. Pretty good, I think. Also: for Hutchins-Wolfskin Road, which is a dirt/gravel road connecting east-west Wolfskin Road with Hway 77 (aka Union Pt Rd): A couple of inclines along Hutchins-Wolfskin, but mostly a good gravel/dirt road that gets us across the valley between Wolfskin and 77. Still, probably not a good idea to use it if there's been more than a couple of inches or more of rain in the last 24 hours. In that case we should route up Wolfskin, east on 78, and down 77. We should inform Central/911 that we have to take the long route.

Proposal Submitted

2009-07-11T07:50:00.004-04:00

Glenn will have more to say about this, I'm sure, and will also put up some supporting material later. But for now:

Congratulations to Glenn for pushing the submit button on the FEMA Assistance to Firefighters grant program yesterday, just before the 5pm deadline. This is the second such submit button he's pushed - the previous one for different proposal was pushed in May.

This was a very complex proposal for a new fire station, to replace our 30-year-old dilapidation of a now wholly inadequate building. He's been working on the infrastructure and details of this for just about a year now. That included everything that anyone contemplating building a house would have to do, plus quite a few others.

Glenn did just about everything substantive to the proposal from acquiring the extra adjoining land needed to build the station (a donation from a very generous landowner) to getting it rezoned (NOT a simple process) to getting perc tests to getting country permits for septic system, environmental disturbance, and a few others along the way. Glenn designed the required structure, investigated LEED requirements, navigated the complicated instructions for proposals, acquired the fire department personnel and district data, and wrote the narrative. He interviewed at least a dozen companies in order to construct the budget. He states that every Oglethorpe County official and company rep he worked with was competent and helpful and a pleasure to get to know.

Glenn could detail much more in the way of "interesting learning experiences," but here's a couple:

On his travels he learned that more than a few submissions are being made from other fire departments in northeast Georgia, mostly (all?) professional ones. Their strategy is to farm out a proposal, presumably at considerable cost, to experts who make their living writing such proposals.

The number of catch-22s is amazing - things have to be in place before the proposal can be submitted, but quite a few of these things really can't be done, or paid for, until after a proposal is successful. Glenn cleverly resolved several of these issues to at least some level of satisfaction.

Here's an example: LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. All new structures have to meet certain green standards to have a reasonable chance of success for funding, and LEED certification is the most credible way to go about it. Certification is *extremely* expensive, and investing that kind of up front out of pocket money is simply impossible for a volunteer fire department.

Time that Glenn spent? Including the meticulous building designs and redesigns over the course of a year, endless measurements - thousands of hours. I can personally attest to it.

Likelihood of success? No idea. It is suggested that 1% of proposals will be funded - sounds pretty unlikely, but there may be some division in funding for professional vs volunteer that we don't know about. My personal evaluation is that if that were the case then Glenn's final product would certainly end up in the top 1% in a volunteer category.

Still, it's what you have to do. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs and you can't break eggs if you don't have them in the first place. You can't get them in the first place unless someone else has the chickens, and sometimes you have to buy them the chickens.

Regardless of whether we are enjoying omelets someday, no effort was wasted. Glenn has a lot of eggs in place, now. Or maybe it's chickens.

Congratulations

2009-05-20T08:26:00.009-04:00

Thanks are due to Glenn, Ed, and Phyllis for their work on the grant proposal for a new pumper. Ed hit the submit button last night, and the proposal was complete. Phyllis started it off with a rough draft a couple of weeks ago and Glenn and Ed spent a grueling week polishing it to perfection. The FEMA Assistance to Firefighters application rules were pretty stringent, and the final result was what we all thought a very good proposal. Well done!

A large part of a grant proposal is in documenting the personnel and the accomplishments of the fire department as a whole. This includes:

Those who keep our books and records.

Those who organize and come to training.

Those who attend our business meetings.

Those who help to raise funds, and who contribute to them.

Those who have written proposals in the past, for that turns out to be a record of the past.

Those who spend their vacations fighting fires elsewhere.

Those who show up at calls, for that's why we're here.

All these things have to be established and verifiable - the first hurdle in evaluating a proposal is that it will be thrown out if these things can't be substantiated. So in addition to Glenn, Phyllis, and Ed, all those who have been a part of this deserve thanks as well.

There's another part of the documentation that goes into a grant proposal, and that's to establish the support of the community. The Wolfskin community that we serve has been steadfastly supportive through the years. We hope they realize the accomplishments they've made possible, and so a very large appreciation is due to them as well.

Thanks also to Mike Geraci, our former fire chief now in Michigan. He and colleagues encouraged and advised us in the early stages.

I don't mean to get all syrupy but you really don't realize how many efforts by so many people turn out to be important until you're involved in writing a grant proposal. It kind of lays it all out.

Call for Volunteers

2009-05-08T08:49:00.006-04:00

Over the last few months we've bid, or will bid, farewell to several of our fine fellow firefighters. Andy took a job in southwest Georgia and is on indefinite leave. Scott will be leaving us at the end of June to the next step in his career. And Brian is off to the west to fight forest fires for the summer. We wish them all the best and grateful thanks for everything they've done for us.

And so that brings us to volunteers. We urgently need more firefighters, but there are plenty of jobs outside of that to do as well. You don't have to live in Wolfskin - Brian and Andy are/were Athens-Clarke County residents. You don't have to have previous training in firefighting - all of us started out as folks who didn't know anything about that and just wanted to learn and help the community.

Or maybe you've had a connection with or done firefighting in the past and want to take it up again on a more relaxed basis.

Whatever the case, think about it. Don't dismiss the possiblity because you think everything is under control and we have all we need. We don't. We need you, and welcome all of good will. Take a look through this website - there are well over a hundred posts here and I think you'll agree that we're an enthusiastic, relaxed, and committed group.

Finally, tell others you know, who you think may be interested but might not read our website. And let us know you did - that in itself is a volunteer effort that shouldn't go unthanked!

You can contact our Fire Chief, Ed Frey, or myself, at any of the phone numbers or email addresses located in spots all over this page. Or you can just drop by on any Thursday evening. That's when we're at 854 Wolfskin Road, working on the trucks, practicing a variety of skills, and generally having a good time.

Fire Alarm Call

2009-04-24T08:04:00.004-04:00

Thanks to David, Phyllis, Brian, Glenn, Wayne (pumper), Ed

Dispatch at 10:20pm Thursday night for unknown fire alarm on Bridges Way, which is our only major high density subdivision off Double Bridges Road. I had Central notified en route and the pumper just leaving the station 10:30pm when the 10-22 came 10:31pm so all is good. Phyllis, Brian, and David went directly to the address. Arnoldville FD and Crawford FD also responded.

False alarm. Nonetheless, very good response. Everyone had checked in by 11pm, and that's great.

Notes: if you're playing around with your security system and the fire alarm goes off, call Central (911) to cancel. Unless you want a visit from three fire departments within ten to fifteen minutes.

We've had more fire calls in 2009 so far than in all of 2008.

Vehicle Accident Call

2009-04-19T10:11:00.002-04:00

Saturday evening brought a 6pm call for a two-vehicle accident on Hway 78 (Athens Road between Old Edwards and Wolfskin), initially to Arnoldsville. At 6:20pm, Wolfskin was paged out for apparatus support.

Thanks to Ed, Glenn, David, Wayne (pumper) for response.

We were there for the usual reasons, Just In Case, but also for possible cleanup need. The idea seems to have been to wash off the road but there was leakage of transmission fluid/coolant mix and they used dry absorbant instead. Good on Oglethorpe County for choosing an appropriate cleanup method. It didn't take long, and I think we were back in 45 minutes.

Good response, well-done. Thanks, all. Only mistake was me running over the chock, but Ed caught that I was just trying to make him feel better.

Early Thu Apr 9: Structure Fire Call

2009-04-09T20:57:00.005-04:00

Thanks to David, Glenn, Wayne for response. Tanker driver: Wayne

Original dispatch was to Arnoldsville FD around midnight Thursday morning for a structure fire at Meyer Farm Road (just this side of Hargrove Lake Road, 10-15 miles from Wolfskin FD). Devils Pond FD and Beaverdam FD were also called, then Crawford FD and Winterville FD. Sounds like around 7 pumpers and tankers involved, as well as EMS and LE. The road was very well blocked.

The WFD tanker was dispatched at 0021, I was enroute by 0029 with Glenn on way to lock up and follow. I believe I arrived at 0045, David already there. We provided a tank of water (2500 gal) nursing to DPFD tanker.

Structure, a residence, had been reported as fully involved shortly after we were called. There may have been a smoke inhalation injury but otherwise no one was hurt. Refilled the trusty tanker and were back at station at 0253.

Beaverdam's Ray did a fantastic job as IC this morning, convening a short meeting of firefighters toward the end to tell us what would happen now, and moving up and down the row of engines keeping us all informed. Bill Moody was sharp as a tack, relaying to Central that we had arrived, and also when we had been released. Oglethorpe Central dispatcher also did a great job, including thanking folks as they arrived back at station.

I was unsuccessful in reaching anyone by phone, but since it was out of district, only tanker water was needed, and so many FDs were present, I figured it would be mostly just standing around for a couple of hours after getting things going. Which it was. Otherwise I would have been more persistent.

Note: our county roads are quiet and nice to travel on between midnight and 4AM.

Late Wed Apr 1: Good Will Call

2009-04-02T22:44:00.003-04:00

During mid evening, Central requested we respond to a residence, close to the fire station, who reported that their carbon monoxide alarm had sounded. Ed, Glenn, Phyllis, Jim, and David each responded in their POVs. The owners said that the alarm went of after a gas heater was turned on. The owners had turned off the heater before Wolfskin arrived and Jim scanned the area with his own monitor and confirmed the absence of carbon monoxide. Ed made sure the unit and its gas supply were both turned off and told the owners to have the gas heater checked by a repair person.

Note: carbon monoxide is a highly flammable, tasteless, odorless, invisible, and lethal gas produced by incomplete combustion. Install carbon monoxide detectors near fireplaces and where propane or natural gas is burned. Although it has the same density as air, the gas will rise along with the other warm combustion gases; place the monitor above the the flames but more importantly where you can easily get to it to test it, change its batteries and to turn it off.

Brush Fire Late Afternoon

2009-02-23T09:31:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Phyllis, Ed (pumper), Glenn, Brian, and Lisa.

Sunday Feb 22, about 6pm, Central paged out a 1070 brush fire for Wolfskin FD off Double Bridges Road, called in by a resident of "The Bridges" subdivision. The brush fire itself was north of the subdivision. Crawford FD and Arnoldsville FD were also called out, and as first arrivals CFD was incident command. Forestry was also called but cancelled soon after. From Wolfskin, Brian got there ahead of our pumper and was already busy in the field. He grabbed the booster hose and continued working.

Note: Callers don't always know the geography. Since this was called in from the subdivision, at least some of the engines went down the access road to the subdivision. The fire was actually in a field that could not be accessed from the subdivision road - the field was accessible by a road farther up Double Bridges Road.

Lisa quickly realized this and informed Central - to their credit they quickly paged out the information. This was important since if the wind had been a bit different the fire could have approached the houses while the engines were on the other side!

This is really our only subdivision where houses are built right next to each other.

Structure Fire Control Class

2009-01-11T14:12:00.002-05:00

Saturday was Structure Fire Control class at the Training Facility in Washington. Ed Frey, Brian Mixon, Andy Rusk and Glenn Galau drove over and arrived on the dot at 8:00 am for a full day of work. Scott Snyder and Wayne Hughes had also planned on the event but were unable to go.

The Structure Fire Control Training Facility in Washington GA
Several of us had been there before. The metal building simulates a two story house with propane fires in several rooms on each floor. Students are divided up into crews of four, assigned an instructor, and during several cycles, called evolutions, attack the fires starting from different floors. A lot of up and down stairs dragging a charged hose and in the dark and wet attacking fires in simulated beds, sofas, stoves and other props. The students rotate their positions on the hose with each evolution. The focus is on technique, teamwork and physical fitness, rather than to give the students a real-life fire to control. So a lot of instruction by the crew instructors is an essential part of the training.

It started with checks of blood pressure and if equipment met standards, and then dealing with PPE and BAs that just didn't cooperate today

Our crew before the evolutions began: Ed, Jim, Brian, Nick and Andy
Jim Parish is from McDuffie County Fire and Rescue and the crew instructor was Nick Nesbitt from Martinez Columbia Fire and Rescue. Nick was with the crew through all of the exercises. Several other instructors were on safety station inside and outside of the structure. Somehow they were fairly easy to pick out of the crowd even in full PPE.


Safety Instructors
It is just not the four fire fighters on their own. Backup crews have to help feed or take up hose. Charged safety lines are manned if anything goes wrong. Nothing happens until everything is confirmed to be in place and everyone knows what their job is. In the photo below, the open door on the right on top and the one in the middle on the bottom floor lead to the rooms where the fires are controlled.

No fires now; both control room doors are open

Discussion before the first evolution

Up the outside stairs for an interior, down-the-stairs attack

The crew ahead gets directions and our crew feeds hose


And this is what they confronted about five times during their descent, taken from inside the first-floor control room. In the bottom photo my reflection is on the left and reflection of the control room and the director is the right. A safety instructor is in the center and the crew on the left is suppressing a fire in the simulated kitchen

In the left photo, the nearest fire fighter is a safety instructor. In the right photo, he was against the window with the next crew

At the end of the day after finishing all the evolutions

New Year's Eve Call

2009-01-01T09:27:00.000-05:00

A 6:30 AM call on Dec 31 to a structure fire on Bear Mill Road. Tanker (Wayne, driver, and Ed) and Andy and Glenn responded. Lisa came associated with first responders/EMS. We were called via automatic aid for Crawford FD, which covers this area. Maxeys FD was there, Arnoldsville FD as well. If I've missed anyone, let me know.

We supplied water to Arnoldville and emptied the tank. Ed and Andy donned BAs and worked within the structure. Glenn returned to station in order to gather up more air cylinders if needed.

There's no good time to lose a home, but New Year's Eve must be the worst. There was a smoke inhalation injury, and a lift for that.

Notes: A rain a couple of days earlier made direct travel from WFD Station difficult along the dirt roads. The tanker successfully forded the two places that Barrow Creek crosses, but there were two places along Bear Mill Road where the clay was very slippery. Take the long route through Crawford and down Hway 77 when conditions have been wet.

As well, a safety issue: several times thick smoke enveloped pump operators on apparatus close to the scene. There's no such thing as clean smoke, but smoke from a burning structure is filled with noxious junk. Parking apparatus farther away from the structure will help, especially in early morning or late evening hours when smoke does not disperse well.

We were fairly done by 10:30am, refilled the tanker, and back at the station to refill BAs. Thanks to Glenn, Andy, Ed, Wayne, and Lisa.

New Fire Station: Rezoning Accomplished

2008-12-15T00:24:00.004-05:00

Here is a belated, but hopefully the next-to-final update on the land on which we want to build a new station. To review, a third parcel was to be donated by Forest Kellogg and there was a request to the Oglethorpe County Board of Commissioners to rezone and combine the three parcels into a single parcel and to grant a variance to allow a corner of the new station to be 67 feet from the right of way rather than the 100 feet required for new construction.

It has all been done. On 10 November 2008 the Board of Commissioners granted the requests and on 26 November the Deed of Gift of the third parcel was recorded at the courthouse. These documents have been added to the Rezoning/Variance Request 8 Mb pdf or 2 Mb pdf described in the 15 October 2008 post.

The department gratefully thanks the Board of Commissioners for the rezoning and variance, and especially, through the kind offices of Forest Kellogg, the Woodlands of Georgia, Inc. for the gift of the third parcel.

The process should conclude with the signing of a long-term lease of the property, now in the name of the Commissioners, to Wolfskin VFD, Inc. for the express purpose of maintaining a polling station(!) for the precinct. Whatever works.

- Glenn Galau

December Events: Elections, Party, and 911 Roadside Address Markers!

2008-11-07T07:13:00.003-05:00

December is an important month for Wolfskin. Please mark your calendar for the upcoming events.

Thursday, Dec 4, will be the night on which we elect officers and board members. It's important to have a full house so do plan to attend!

Thursday, Dec 18, will be our annual Christmas party. We'll have more details later but this is the event at which we enjoy getting together with members of the community as well as with each other.

Oglethorpe County Fire Departments are now selling 911 driveway address markers, those reflective green signs that are so important in finding you if you have an emergency. Each FD is responsible for its own area so if you live in Wolfskin we'd like to see every address with a new 911 roadside marker!

They make great holiday gifts too, so please get your order in now. $20 per sign, or $25 for sign and installation. Email Lisa, or call her at 706-207-5414 for more information.

New Fire Station: Station Design, Additional Land, Rezoning, and Setback Variance

2008-10-15T02:36:00.014-04:00

The Wolfskin VFD Firefighters have been talking about a new station for many years. The need was made clear to all with the arrival of the Super Tanker in March 2006. It was so large that it could only be housed in the main bay of the station (after some modifications to both its roof and the tanker). This required that the aging pumper be moved from the main bay to the lean-to bay, displacing the Knocker/Brush truck. The Knocker was squeezed into the kitchen/training room after the room was stripped of its fixtures and adding bay doors. This was possible only because the doorway between the main bay and the kitchen had been exactly placed many decades ago to allow entry into the Knocker's driver seat.

Our property was donated to the Board of Commissioners as Parcel 1 in 1982 and Parcel 2 in 2006 by Forest Kellogg. Earlier attempts to design a new station on this land or on a larger property were not successful. The present design, however, fits on the property although it does not meet the minimum property size and the minimum setback from a frontage-road now required for new construction. Encouraged by this result, Forest Kellogg very kindly donated a third parcel which brings the combined property to above the minimum required size and allows the station to meet the frontage-road setback.

So the next step is to combine the three parcels. This requires they each have the same owner (now the Board of Commissioners) and the same zoning classification (now P/G: Public/Government for Parcel 1 and A-2: General Agricultural for Parcels 2 and 3). Hence the request to rezone Parcels 2 and 3 to P/G: Public/Government.

Furthermore, the department would prefer the new station be sited as originally designed to fit on Parcels 1+2. This leaves all of Parcel 3 for a future outdoor Community Center. Hence the request for a minor variance in the frontage-road setback, in which a corner of the new station would be 67 feet from the 40 foot-wide Right-of-way of Wolfskin Road rather than the 100 feet required by the new zoning requirements. The Figure below shows the requested position of the new station on the combined property. Click here for a larger 0.2 Mb .png version of the Figure. See the Figures in the Rezoning/Variance Request [8 Mb pdf or 2 Mb pdf] for parcel boundaries and other details. We can use the old station while the new station is being built.

And here is the floor plan of the proposed station. Click here for a larger 0.3 Mb .png version with specifications. There is a discussion of the goals of the design, the limitations in its size and siting, and other design considerations in the Rezoning/Variance Request [8 Mb pdf or 2 Mb pdf].

For those unfamiliar with the process, there is a lengthy document detailing the required contents of a rezoning request. Just between ourselves, it is possible that I am the only one who knows exactly what is requested by this document. It took several months and a 'sketch-plat hearing' before the Planning and Zoning Commission and a brief before the Board of Commissioners to learn exactly what the requests should be. With the help of Mary Cook, the Administrator of the Department of Planning, Zoning and Inspections, ten copies of the final comprehensive 25-page Rezoning/Variance Request were officially submitted in mid September. As should be obvious from the photo below, both of us were relieved.

The Planning and Zoning Commission approved both the request for rezoning of Parcels 2 and 3 and the request for the variance in the setback and recommended the three parcels be combined. What remains is a hearing before the Board of Commissioners at 6:30 PM November 3 and a vote by the Commissioners later in the month. The Public Notice of the hearing has been erected in front of the station and a letter describing the requests and the hearing has been sent by the Board of Commissioners to all property owners in the area.

Everyone I have seen in the Office of Clerk of Superior Court, the Department of Planning, Zoning, and Inspections, the Office of the Tax Assessor, the County Department of Public Health, and the County Board of Commissioners have been very helpful. Wolfskin and I thank them for their goodwill and excellent service.

And a very special thanks to Forest Kellogg. He artfully helped me to the design solution and then surprised me with a very big reward.

- Glenn Galau

ZAP

2008-09-27T11:44:00.001-04:00

Thursday night five of us journeyed to Oconee County Station #8 for a training session on powerline hazards. This isn't the first time, and it won't be the last. Bruce Thaxton, Oconee County fire chief, and his firefighters put on a mighty good show and they're always generous in inviting us in.

The two-hour training was given by a Georgia Power transmission engineer. He is also a volunteer firefighter on the side, so had a nice perspective on avoiding what is invariably an issue in one form or another at just about any fire call. I want to say his name was Larry Stephens (or Stevens) but I could be wrong about that. Just leave a comment to correct me and I'll do so.

I'm certainly no transmission expert, so with the caveat that I am passing along info I took in without the vetting or skepticism of expertise, then, here's a few high points that might be generally interesting:

We got a quick course on power distribution. The pylon-supported high lines that run long distances through broad corridors are fed directly by the generating station. Those transmission lines are typically at 500,000 volts. Yikes!

Transmission lines feed into, through, or are tapped by substations - those fenced-in installations that are clearly electrical in nature. Your general neighborhood is supported by a substation of one size or another, and the voltage is stepped down to 12,000-24,000 volts here. Those are distribution lines that you see on the roadside poles that are carrying this stepped-down power.

And then there are the power poles with the cylindrical transformers closer to a structure. These step the voltage down further to the 120-240 volts that enters your house. Sometimes those transformers are ground installations, not mounted on poles.

In any event, it's the distribution lines (12-24 kv) that are most often encountered by firefighters at vehicle accidents and storm damage. A fire call to a structure will likely involve both the 12-24 kv distribution lines, as well as the 120-240v structure voltage on the other side of the transformer.

OK, that's the background. It's a typical setup for our area, and I imagine its details can differ elsewhere.

1. It goes without saying that downed power lines are dangerous. Especially when they're *not* arcing, because it's then that the unwary assume they've been de-energized. I'll get this upfront right away and not mention it again though our speaker warned us again and again - never touch a power line.

2. To me, one of the coolest things was the image of the helicopter repair of the extremely high voltage transmission lines. Larry said that it's inevitable that the local 911 will get calls from passersby reporting a helicopter caught on the overhead wires with a little man outside it trying to free it. In fact, there will be a little man outside it, on a platform attached to the landing gear. He'll be wearing a metal-impregnated suit, and will have a little metal monkey tail attached to the overhead wire. He, the platform, and the copter will all be charged to 500,000 volts. And it's ok - weird, very weird sensation, Larry said - but ok. So long as you don't touch ground, and then it's instant vaporization.

3. That's an important concept - it doesn't matter whether you're charged at 0 volts or 500,000 volts, so long as there's nowhere for the current to go. It applies to vehicle accidents involving power lines (or ladder trucks touching power lines). The tires insulate the vehicle from ground, and even if a 24,000 volt line is lying over the car, you're relatively safe - so long as you don't get out of the car.

DON'T GET OUT OF THE CAR! And no one should approach the car, either. Not until the line has been de-energized.

4. Of course it's possible in vehicle accidents that a fire may be involved, and then you really do have to get out of the car. How do you do it? VERY important: you HOP out of the car, landing with your feet together. And then you HOP away from the car until you reach someone who seems to be normal.

The reason for the initial hop out of the car is to avoid simultaneously touching the highly charged car and the ground at the same time. If you complete the circuit, you will be dead. If you hop, then you won't complete the circuit.

The reason for continuing to hop away from the downed wire has to do with ground gradient electricity. A downed wire produces a voltage gradient spreading outward over the ground in concentric circles. Especially if you're close to the center, even the foot or two of a normal stride will place one of your feet at a different potential than the other one, and current will flow up one leg and down the other into ground, and you will be shocked. Keeping your feet together helps to minimize this.

(BTW, this also explains why a squirrel can run along a power line, or birds can perch on one. They're charged to the same potential and no current flows. So long as the squirrel HOPS from the line to the power pole he's ok, but if he steps across, it's goodbye.)

5. Some interesting observations on an increasing problem - folks invading substations and stealing the copper wire out of the transformers. They tip the transformer over and spill out the oil that fills it, then cut out the copper coil and make off. Sometimes they leave a charred hand or two behind, in the process.

(The presence of large amounts of oil is, by the way, one of the main combustibles at a power substation. And sometimes they do catch fire. There was no equivocation here: don't even bother spraying water or foam into a substation - the equipment will all have to be replaced anyway so it's needless, and very dangerous to spray water into an energized substation. Suppress any fire that may be spreading outside the substation, but don't get anywhere near the substation itself.)

6. Over the last few years there has been an increasing availability of portable, gasoline generators that folks like to use for power outages. Improperly connected generators (and this is very common) can "backfeed" from the house wiring, into the transformer, get stepped up, and enter the grid. The danger isn't just to the homeowner, it's to the powerline workers trying to repair a line. From the power company's point of view the line has been turned off, they *think* it's de-energized, but the homeowner's generator is powering it with potentially lethal voltage and current. It wasn't such a problem before, with noisy generators that powerline workers would listen for, but Larry said that with the extremely quiet Honda generators now available, powerline workers cannnot hear them in the vicinity.

I'm guessing that home solar panels similarly connected to the grid could create the same sort of problem.

7. The last video, an amateur video that just happened to be made, was of an automated switching failure. Cherrypicker used by tree surgeon accidently touches power line, but instead of automatically switching out, all switches failed. The transformer blew, and then ten seconds later, the next one down the line blew. And ten seconds after that the third. And so forth. Each house connected was suddenly subjected to 12,000 volts instead of 240v. And *they* blew too - visibly erupting into flames and smoke anywhere there was wiring. The impression as the charge moved down the distribution line was of a ravening, roaring monster passing by houses and igniting them in order. The sound of the beast was unearthly. Very dramatic.

Very cool two hours, and again thanks to OCFD for the opportunity.

--Wayne

Pumper Problems Solved

2008-07-25T07:52:00.003-04:00

A couple of weeks ago we were training with the pumper and tanker, simultaneously drafting from the drop tank and pumping from the pumper. Everything was going well in the 90 deg heat and then the pump stopped. Andy and Josh located what seemed to be a problem with the tank to pump pull lever, crawled into the pump compartment and secured the lever-valve connection. That didn't solve the problem, and then a second serious problem became evident when we attempted a pumper refill at the hydrant. The tank immediately began overflowing as we attempted to fill it.

We spent a Sunday troubleshooting the problem, examining the undercarriage while putting water in from the tanker, and it was clear that there wasn't a tank leak but rather an immediate overflow from the overflow pipe. Of course that shouldn't happen until the tank is actually full, not empty. We hypothesized that the overflow pipe had become disconnected from the bottom of the tank, and that meant we had to have access to the inside of the tank.

The following Thursday we pulled all 1500 feet of hose off the top deck. Here's what it looks like - 1500 feet of hose piled in front of the pumper in its bay:

And here's what the top deck looks like without 1500 feet of hose neatly laid out:

To make a long story short, Glenn had recalled - too late to prevent us from having to deal with all that hose - that this problem had occurred a few months ago during a refill. The passenger side panel doesn't have much on it, but it does have a teensy little pull knob faintly labelled "tank drain." You probably know where I'm going with this. That knob had been pulled out just a teensy bit, but enough to drain the tank as we had been attempting to fill it. We pushed the knob in (apparently it can't be locked in position) and everything was perfect.

So now we need to put 1500 feet of hose back on the deck, and we started that last night by getting an attack line laid back on. The rest will have to wait - we've had only two or three folks show up for training in the last two weeks, and we need a few more to help us out.

Catchup on Early Summer

2008-06-17T08:20:00.002-04:00

April and May were pretty slow, but we did get a call for mutual aid for a barn fire from Oconee County, and we're always pleased to be able to support them. We got there in excellent time and were able to fill one of the knockers that was involved in suppression. It was Saturday June 7 in the early evening but still well above 90 degF, right in the middle of our week-long heat wave that saw two record highs broken. Many thanks to the volunteers who supplied water and gatorade!

Our Brian left that very day for Oregon, to commence his summer job in suppressing wildland fires in the northwest. He has a lot of experience in this, having spent time during the last couple of summers in North Carolina and training in south Georgia. He'll have photos that we hope to get and post in the next two months before he returns mid-August. I'll link to whatever website he may be posting his own writing to, and everyone should be keeping track of him!

Training sessions for the last few months have emphasized polishing for the most common sorts of demands that are made of us. Everyone who goes to calls and who has been issued PPE and equipment should be attending these. We're beginning to notice the difference between those who attend and those who don't - the latter don't know how to fit in, and the questions they ask are the ones we have addressed and prepared for in training! And we do want us all to be able to work together. Training is 6:30 on all Thursdays except the first one, unless otherwise noted and emailed. 911 always pages these out.

For the last month or so we've been concentrating on responses to vehicle accidents, something that we get called for fairly frequently. And we've been including the Oglethorpe County Firefighter Association Standard Operation Guidelines in this - the expectations that WVFD and OCFA has in firefighters who respond to a scene. Everyone who responds needs to know about this!

Any ideas or thoughts on training, comment to this post or email to Wayne. See you Thursday!

How Much Rain?

2008-05-17T07:54:00.005-04:00

I posted a version of this elsewhere, but it struck me that this could be a very important thing for fire departments, especially volunteer fire departments, to know. So I'm tailoring it for this blog to let others know what's available.

I was recently alerted to CoCoRaHS, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network. I took a look at it and thought about it for a day and then I registered. I have a considerable interest in weather, I love to see maps, I love the idea of citizen participation, and I love seeing Oglethorpe County maps. So.

Before I say anything else, let me say this: get over to the CoCoRaHS page, and register. Better yet, get your kids to do it, if you have kids. Nothing could be easier, nor the instant gratification so great. If you have an interest in the weather, and who does not?, you can add to a daily database that provides unique and valuable information. If you can read a rain gauge, remember to read it every morning by 7am, have enough access to the internets to log on and put in one number and hit submit, then that's it! It occupies about 5 minutes of your time, or better yet (again), your kids' time. CoCoRaHS would like everyone to use the same rain gauge, so there is that investment (I ordered mine yesterday, even though I have a good one), and they would like everyone to have participated in at least an online training session.

Now not all states are yet a part of it, but many that are not, are coming online in 2008 - check the home page for CoCoRaHS for the listing. Georgia just came online May 1, due to the efforts of a few interested folks. California goes online in October, it looks like. HAHA - Georgia beat California, neener neener.

I took a few screenshots because I think it's pretty impressive. As I said, there's instant gratification, and your results are updated fairly instantly onto the maps. For firefighters, knowing the rainfall in parts of the county can be pretty important. I know how much rain fell yesterday here in my little spot at Wolfskin, but I have no idea how much fell near Vesta, or Philomath, and as we all know, rainfall can be different even a few miles away, and Oglethorpe County is a BIG county. Well, this tells you that, provided there's someone to report.

And I can enjoy refreshing the Oglethorpe County map (there are *12* active participants in Oglethorpe - imagine that!) during the course of the early morning to see my fellows gradually adding their data along with mine. The power of the internets, used the way it should be!

Here's the US map on May 11, the Mother's Day storm system, for rain that fell from 7AM May 10 to 7AM May 11. You can pretty much tell the states that don't participate yet - Washington, California, Minnesota, Arkansas (and isn't that a pity, considering), but many of those are coming online soon. The gray dots are reports of no rain, and those are extremely important. ALWAYS enter the zero for no rainfall - that negative evidence is just as good as any rain at all, even better.

Just look at Oregon: you can see where the rainshadow cast by the mountains is just by viewing the transition from blue dots to gray ones.

Here's the map of Georgia on the same day, with portions of surrounding states. Unfortunately a lot of folks who are registered didn't add their data if there was no rainfall. But they should have! And you can see that there are empty counties - Georgia needs a lot more participants, particularly if you live in a rural area. CoCoRaHS ultimately would like to see active participants every few square miles, and especially in rural areas. But not bad, really, considering that Georgia has only been online for less than three weeks.

Here's what you see when you look at the station map for Oglethorpe County. I'm down there at near the southwestern boundary with Clarke County. Notice that my station, GA-OG-12, is right next to GA-OG-3, the labels overlap. That's my neighbor up the street. But those data are not redundant, because even a mile away rainfalls can be different, as everyone knows. And that's another thing - yes of course there are professional weather stations, but they're so far and few between, nothing like this density.

However, you can see that parts of the county are not represented. We need some Beaverdam folks, some Philomath firefighters, maybe Vesta, Salem, Glade, and Maxeys too, to add their data.

And so on May 11, nine of the twelve Oglethorpe County participants gave climatologists and other interested parties these data. I'm the 2.00 inches of rain, but just north of me two folks only got half that, whereas Lexington got slightly more than that.

It's that degree of resolution that makes this so valuable, something that cannot be achieved professionally.

Another benefit: yesterday's email exchanges with the Oglethorpe County Coordinator, as well as with the Georgia Region 1 Coordinator, introduced me to a couple of great folks whose interests overlap considerably with mine, and not just in the arena of measuring rainfall.

I see the possibility of uploading this county map on a daily basis, to inform everyone of the previous day's rainfall. Much of the time (as we know) we'll all know we're dry and should be careful. But rain falls the way it wants to, and some parts of the county may be dry and some not. Wouldn't it be good to know?

--Wayne

Joint Training

2008-04-18T10:27:00.002-04:00

Last night was our Third Thursday, and Arnoldsville FD brought their new pumper, their pride and joy, and initiated us into the mysteries of its operation.

AFD and Wolfskin have worked together before on the Mod 1 training class last spring, but not in our regular training sessions, and of course we meet often on fire calls. But those aren't so relaxed, and so this was a great opportunity to get to know each other and our respective equipment.

AFD Chief Joe Siegert and company put their pumper through its paces, introducing us to its capabilities. ATO Andy got scooted back a few feet when we upped the psi through a 4-inch hose to 250. And then we gave AFD the gift of a refill of water from our tanker to send them on their way.

I took the camera but of course completely forgot about it, and so don't have any memorabilia to offer. But you can surf right on over to Arnoldsville's new website and see some pics of the new pumper there. And leave a comment to let them know you were there.

And that brings to mind - I've added a section that I need to put in a better place - for any and all of Oglethorpe County's fire department websites. That now includes us, Arnoldsville, Philomath, and Salem.

--Wayne 411

New Firefighter Brian

2008-04-04T06:39:00.002-04:00

I say "new firefighter" but Brian has been fighting wildland fires in North Carolina and south Georgia for some time now, so he already had more experience than most of us have in that arena. This experience overlaps nicely with his interest and education in Forestry.

The great news that we all congratulate him on is that he has passed the written Mod 1 exam, which he took as a challenge. This means that he didn't take the weeklong lecture part of the course, but passed (and more than just passed) the written exam studying on his own.

And last Thursday Mar 27 he spent all day proving himself by going through the required structure fire practical. From his description last night it sounded pretty rigorous, with basements and multiple rooms involved during various times of the day. Despite all that he was on his way to our usual training night at Wolfskin but was sidelined en route by a flat tire. Apparently there are no ten-codes for that.

Brian will be heading out west for a two and a half-month job starting in June (I think), where he'll be working with crews fighting wildland fires in Montana and Idaho, if I recall correctly. We might be hearing from him and seeing some photos that he sends us this summer, and we'll post those as they come in and keep everyone informed.

Of course we're all pleased with him and excited for the opportunity he has this summer but that means he won't be here in Wolfskin, and he'll certainly be missed.

(BTW - I haven't put last names - I never do unless it's clear that it's ok. I certainly will be glad to do so if it meets approval. Brian's efforts have been a great accomplishment.)

--Wayne

Events of February

2008-03-10T08:04:00.004-04:00

We held our First Thursday Business Meeting on March 6. A number of accomplishments that should not go unnoted:

The Assistant Chief and Chief Ed Frey journeyed to Forsyth on Feb 29 Friday for a structure burn class. This ended up going until after 9pm, and they were tired firefighters indeed.

The yearly Firefighter Weekend occurs a little early this year, also in Forsyth, Mar 14-16. Four of us, at least, will be going this year: Phyllis and Glenn will be taking the NIMS Intro to Unified Command course, Wayne the Georgia Fire Incident Reporting System course, and Andy the Intro to Wildland & Wildland Urban Interface Firefighting.

Brian, besides implementing the fantastic logo placements on the tanker and pumper, is spending his spring break in south Georgia, conducting prescribed burns. Before he left he passed the CPR with flying colors and took the Mod 1 written exam as a challenge. We'll look forward to his return.

Phyllis, our former Fire Chief, has returned after a year of regeneration. She sold $2,126 of steer raffle tickets to benefit the fire department. That's a huge amount of work, and many thanks to her. See her letter to the Editor of the Oglethorpe Echo of March 6, but she's right in thanking the Commercial Bank for its steadfast support:

Once again our Oglethorpe County Volunteer Fire Departments have benefited tremendously from another successful steer raffle fundraiser. We thank the Commercial Bank which for many years—about ever since I can remember—has bought the champion steer from an Oglethorpe County youth at the Washington-Wilkes Steer Show and then donated the steer to the volunteer fire departments for the raffle. It’s a win-win deal all the way ‘round. The youth gets a good price for his/her steer, some lucky person gets a steer for a $1 raffle ticket, and each VFD gets to keep all the money from their own ticket sales.

Let me know if I missed anyone!

--Wayne

WVFD Logos!

2008-02-11T06:20:00.000-05:00

Be sure to attend the Tuesday, Feb 19, Oglethorpe Firefighter Association meeting at 7:30pm. Chuck Gulley, EMA Coordinator for Athens/Clarke County Fire & Emergency Services (ACCFD), will be the guest speaker. Chuck will also bring along the Hazardous Materials Response Vehicle from ACCFD. Glenn has attended a hazmat awareness course given by him and says he's quite a good speaker.

On to something we've wanted to do for a long time.

We've never had logos for our pumper and tanker, and so Brian took matters in hand in the last month. He canvassed the department for input as to what the logos should look like, and then had the decals printed up. He was determined to have at least the tanker done by last Thursday's business meeting so he drove down to Cumming to pick up the logos and he and I spent Thursday afternoon on them, completing the business 30 minutes early. Very nice color selection.

The entire logo came on three decals that had to be positioned carefully. They're considerably reflective!

With two trucks and two doors, that makes four complete decals. It was just about dark by the time we finished the tanker.

On Friday afternoon we completed the pumper, whose doors are shaped a little oddly compared to the tanker.

It was late afternoon with a declining but still bright sun. Nonetheless we had to have a good reflective photo of the new logo. Boots and logos by Brian!

Special All-Day Saturday Training January 12

2008-01-26T09:29:00.000-05:00

I'm late in getting this training session written up. It's photograph heavy, so most of the pics are thumbnails, and you can see a somewhat larger version in a new page by clicking on the thumbnail. I have even larger versions, so let me know if you want a particular photo and I'll email it to you.

This was an all-day session Saturday Jan 12. We met at Wolfskin Station at 8AM, or most of us did, anyway. Ultimately there were six of us here - a couple of us were rabbit hunting that day and couldn't make it ;-) . Nice and cold - temperatures below 30 to start with, and stayed in the 40s all day.

One of the problems with Thursday night training sessions is that while they allow us a coupla hours to practice tactics, they don't give us enough time to really exercise the demands that a large fire call lasting for hours would. This was a good idea - we ended up using most of our stuff.

The event was a large woodpile that had accumulated for a few years, and it represented an opportunity to stage a burn as though it were a real all-day scene. (Note that we don't normally burn in this manner, or necessarily recommend it. It was a convenient and valuable training exercise. Not to say that we didn't have fun.)

After calling in for a permit and notifying 911 so they'd be able to reassure passersby and neighbors, we set off for the burn site. (Note on permit: the permit number is a cell phone number. Not much good if you're in an area of non-reception, as we were.)

Our first mistake - no one had thought to bring the sausage biscuits for breakfast. (Our second, and only other mistake - no one thought to bring any food at all. A fire picnic lacking in food over nine hours is not a picnic at all.)

The first coupla hours were in setup. We eventually used all three 2500-3500 gallon drop tanks. The pumper was our first out and working truck for the incident.

It took three trips with the tanker to fill them all. A successful backup down a muddy slope:

Outgoing Chief Mike Geraci is giving his final instructions to incoming Chief Ed Frey, behind the tanker.

Since we don't close hydrant access in our fire district, the drop tanks are a necessity. Here's two thumbnails showing the connections we've developed for increasing their flexibility, and a third of the excuse for the event.

Left - a tight connection between the drains of two drop tanks allows us to treat two as one. Water delivered into one flows into the other so you don't have to move the truck to prevent overflow.

Middle - a jet siphon. With this you can use the venturi principle and move around large amounts of water through a six-inch hose by jetting a smaller amount of water through a smaller hose into the larger one. That's the brain child of our new Asst Chief and Training Officer, and it worked the first time.

Right - the ostensible reason for this event grown large. That's a foam stick nozzle, and we were testing it out for the first time. The old way is to use buckets of foam concentrate, which is awkward. The foam nozzle here has a single foam stick inserted into it and the delivered water dissolves the solid material gradually, delivering foam out the end. It worked *really* well.

Four of us worked on setting up while the other two played in the woodpile preparatory to setting it on fire, which we did around 10:48AM, according to the time stamp on the first photo. This one was taken well after things got going. The lads did a good job prepping the pile for an efficient burn.

The first thumbnail on the left is just for show, but the middle one shows the hose connection. We used a wye to give two streams, one to a conventional nozzle being lugged around by the stalwart fellows on the left, and the other heading off to the right to the foam nozzle.

The third thumbnail shows the use of fog to cool the American Heroes in back as they approach, say, a burning propane tank, though not in this case.

By noon, the fire was going merrily.

We had a total of thirteen 50-foot lengths of 1-1/2 inch hose hooked together in three lengths and separately connected to various outlets on the pumper. Our engineer did a great job of providing water and controlling pressure from several hundred feet away. Some of us used our radios to communicate - others just yelled or gestured impatiently.

First row of thumbnails:

Left - a not very clear use of the foam. The foam stick worked great, and lasted all day. It reduced by a huge amount the water that had to be put on the fire to extinguish a part of it.

Middle - a pecan tree that was too close - we kept a spray on it periodically to prevent damage. This is a common tactic for protecting all sorts of things that might be close to a large fire.

Right - more use of fog to cool things off on an approach. Fog isn't always what you want to use on a fire but it does keep you from getting radiation burns!

And a last couple of gratuitous images. There are a lot more photos, and they're all very good. Most are probably of internal interest and I'll probably set up a separate page of them. In which case I'll post a notification and email any of interest.

By 3pm we were pretty tired and none of our fellows who didn't make it to the event had brought us any food. (In fairness, one of our rabbit-hunting American Hero fellows did try to call to offer, but reception in the area was apparently nonexistent and phones went unanswered.) And we still had to disconnect and roll up thirteen lengths of hose, drain and disassemble three drop tanks, and make sure the remains of the fire were contained! Not to mention carting everything back into the station. We did finish up by 5:30pm though, and in the end thought it a very successful day training. I'm not sure we want to do this once a month but it's definitely something that should be done occasionally. As Fire Chief Ed said, it's what you'd have to do for a long fire call, and nothing in an evening training of a coupla hours prepares you for it.

--Wayne

Farewell Mike

2008-01-14T06:57:00.000-05:00

Last post I mentioned that we had a board, but that some changes were in the offing. And at our last business meeting Jan 3, we had a quorum and voted to cement those changes.

We've been aware that our Fire Chief, Mike Geraci, was going to be leaving at some point, and that point came much too soon for all of us. He and Jackie will be leaving (in winter!) for the snowy wilds of Michigan, this week.

Assistant Fire Chief Ed Frey automatically moved to Fire Chief for all of five minutes after the announcement and then we made sure he stayed Fire Chief by vote. The new Assistant Fire Chief and Training Officer was also elected. He prefers to not have an internet presence and so we respectfully do not name him here.

And so you have outgoing Chief Mike (previously 401, now 410) on the left, and incoming Chief Ed on the right (now 401), filling the drop tanks behind our very fine tanker, on Saturday.

Mike and the aforementioned anonymous individual joined us just about two years ago, after attending our Dec 2005 Christmas Party, where they were quickly snapped up. Mike already had considerable Navy experience, and along with the aforementioned anonymous individual, immediately took the Mod 1 training for a week in Forsyth.

Both have an impressive array of practical and mechanical expertise. Mike will be known for that, which increased our repertoire of capability enormously over the last year. He'll also be known for increasing our training sessions from an inadequate one Thursday a month to at least all but one Thursday a month, something that has been important in keeping us comfortable and able to do what we do. This wasn't something that was met with a groan - we needed it and welcomed it, and it's made all the difference in the world.

We're going to miss him and Jackie for their dedication, fine barbecue, and impromptu get-togethers. We wish them the best and envy the community they're certainly going to quickly become a part of in Michigan.

We're lucky to have as our new chief Ed Frey, longtime firefighter for Wolfskin (and this year's Firefighter of the Year!).

We Have a Board

2007-12-14T09:14:00.001-05:00

No sooner do we have one than some changes will be made, but I'll announce those later. For now, 2008 is established.

On Dec 6 WVFD firefighters and Board members convened and elected the slate of candidates nominated here. Our 2008 Board Members and Officers:

Officers (and Board Members):

Chief:	Mike Geraci
Assistant Chief:	Ed Frey
Treasurer:	Cary Fordyce
Secretary:	Lisa Vaughan

Community Board Members:
Bill Cosgrove
Jerry Ledbetter (second year of term)

Firefighter Board Members:
Jim Kitchens
Glenn Galau

Firefighter of the Year Our 2007 Firefighter of the Year is Assistant Chief Ed Frey, and most enthusiastic congratulations to him, too. I'll point out that Ed's many responses to daytime calls when firefighters are often not available, and more than once by himself, has earned him quite a reputation.

Many thanks to our old and new Board Members and Officers for all their hard work.

Crawling Through Small Spaces

2007-11-16T09:53:00.000-05:00

A nourishing meal was served up by our training officers last night at WVFD training. The wall of torture, constructed by our resident carpentry genius, was brought out and cobbled back together, and we were all forced to crawl through tiny holes with full PPE and breathing apparatus.

I'm afraid I didn't bring my camera, and I'm really sorry about that because we put on quite a show. But I do have these photos stored away from the end of March 2007, when WVFD put on a damn-good two-month Mod 1 training course for a dozen new firefighters in Oglethorpe County. That's when this construction first made its appearance. As you can see, the openings are pretty small, and it looks like this firefighter might have a wee bit of trouble fitting that BA through:

But that's what you have to do, and probably you aren't going to be doing it in a bright sunny day with plenty of fresh air. You might even be following, with gloved hands, a hose that points the way to safety, with oven-cleaning heat just a few feet above your head:

Our newest firefighters, Gabe and Brian, floored me with how quickly they picked up on familiarity with the SCBAs, the straps, the alarms, putting the BAs on and taking them off, and doing it all with fogged masks and gloves. They got through every tiny hole, and then demanded to do it a last time before the evening was over. Very impressive.

--Wayne

Fire Weather

2007-11-03T16:53:00.000-04:00

Thursday night, less than an hour after returning home from the business meeting, we got paged for a car fire. Things went smoothly, with six WVFD firefighters responding and Arnoldsville VFD backing us up. The car was not under a carport or garage, but out in the open, and that was a relief! Ed and I filled the pumper afterward and were back by 11pm.

It brings up a point, though, this Saturday, and all WVFD firefighters should be prepared for the possibility. Today it just felt like fire weather. Low humidity, a significant breeze, and quite warm temperatures for the beginning of November. Indeed we are at a Level Five fire weather alert, the highest. This includes all of Oglethorpe County and points east toward South Carolina.

Sunday's situtation looks perhaps worse - the humidity will be lower with winds up to 9 mph in the afternoon, and even higher temperatures. Monday may be similar.

A very slight chance of rain on Tuesday, but otherwise continued dry through at least Friday, though daytime temperatures should fall after Tuesday and humidity should increase.

So be very careful!

Annual Business Meeting Set For Dec 6 2007

2007-11-02T08:06:00.001-04:00

This post, and the Calendar entry above, marks Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department's formal announcement of the Annual Business Meeting on Thursday, December 6, at 7:00pm. It is extremely important that all firefighters and board members attend, as a quorum is necessary to conduct essential annual business.

Last night we held our pre-annual preparations, and the Nominating Committee presented this slate of candidates for the 2008 officers and board members. You can direct any questions, suggestions, additional nomination input to me (Wayne) or to Fire Chief Mike Geraci:

Officers (and Board Members):

Chief:	Mike Geraci
Assistant Chief:	Ed Frey
Treasurer:	Cary Fordyce
Secretary:	Lisa Vaughan

Community Board Member:
Bill Cosgrove

Firefighter Board Members:
Jim Kitchens
Glenn Galau

Firefighter of the Year - Please nominate!

-- Wayne

Fire Training in Thomson, Georgia

2007-10-13T06:07:00.000-04:00

Thursday afternoon, Oct 11, six of us loaded the BAs and PPEs into Glenn's truck and ourselves into my Honda. Then off went Ed, Glenn, the Lieutenant, Wayne, Scott, and Jon to Thomson, Georgia for a structure fire training with their city department. Thomson Fire Department was training some of their new city firefighters for Thursday night's event, and Deputy Chief Johnny Crawley extended a kind invitation for us to join them. And that's our Jon there.

Thomson, you may recall, was one of our hosts for the live fire training day last November, also organized by the Georgia Fire Academy and a couple of other organizations. Thomson's Fire Department is a hybrid of full time, part time, and volunteer personnel. Thursday night's event was shorter - just three hours - but much more intensive and we ended up doing nearly as much as before.

Thomson has a resource we don't have - the use of several block houses for training purposes: smoke mazes, hose mazes, and as on Thursday night, controlled live fire. The houses are actually in the same neighborhood as the two real houses that we burned last November. Since these block houses don't themselves burn, a pile of pallets are used to simulate floors, ceiling, and walls:

Unfortunately most of the photos didn't turn out very well, so we don't have the hubbub captured properly here. The event last November was quite large, with well over a hundred folks involved, including training and safety crew. This was much smaller, perhaps 30, but very well organized and a model of procedure. A table on the sidewalk outside the building was the site for keeping track of firefighters entering the structure, leaving it, rotating to relive the previous Rapid Intervention Crew out back (RIC - in case something goes wrong), then rotating to rehab out front until it was our turn to go back in.

Here's Asst Chief/Training Officer Ed intently explaining something, I forget what:

And the rest of the crew, excepting the photographer and observer, Glenn, and Scott hidden in back of Lieutenant Anonymous:

Before the festivities began, we turned in our Personal (or Personnel, designations vary) Accountability System (PAS) tags that hang on the back of the helmets. Here's a WVFD firefighter waiting to go in with his Thomson partner, Junior Williams.

The Safety Officer stood at the door to radio the PAS table of our numbers and time of entry and exit. One partner went first and the other backed him up behind for an attack on the fire. Then they backed out, switched positions, and went back in for another attack. Backed out, turned the hose over to the next attack crew, and rotated out back of the house to replace the previous crew at the RIC station where there wasn't much to do but pant. At each interval we had to pass the IC table to announce our new station and they moved our PAS tags from one station to the next one. Then onto rehab, advising the IC table and getting our PAS tags moved once again. The system ensures that no one is left unaccounted for (unless someone fails to notify the table - that's the weak link).

There was very little time between each of the three attacks that we made, just enough to take the face mask off for a few minutes, then put it back on and go in again. It all has to be done on hand (note singular) and knees, since you're not supposed to stand up in a fire-involved structure (remember that!). In a real situation you might be inside for up to 20 minutes, the amount of air in the BA. We were inside for only 3-4 minutes at any time.

We finished up around 9:30, took off our PPEs and stashed them, thanked the Thomson folks, and went back to their station. They had loaded up our air tanks and refilled them for us in the meantime. We picked them up, put them in the back of Glenn's truck, and stopped for dinner before heading back to Wolfskin, arriving at the station around midnight to put things away before going home.

Thanks to Thomson Fire Department for their generosity in providing a fine training session.

--Wayne

Busy Weekend in Wolfskin

2007-10-09T05:25:00.000-04:00

On our regular business meeting Oct 4 we all marvelled at the lack of fire calls in September, especially given the exceptional drought we've been in since the beginning of summer. September and October daily highs have regularly been 10-20 degF above normal, and you'd have thought that fire calls would have been more frequent.

The next day, on one of our regular 7-10 mile bike rides on the back roads in Wolfskin District, our luck ended. The pager went off as we were returning early Friday evening and we peddled madly back to the POVs and off to the fire station. The call was for a woods fire a bit northeast of Arnoldsville, and we worked with Arnoldsville VFD, Beaverdam VFD, and Crawford VFD until 9:30PM on that.

Then on Sunday morning, and again during a 10-mile bike ride way out in the dirt road sticks, the pager went off. This time we were at least a half-hour away from the POVs, so we had to call for a lift - fortunately Glenn was able to pick us up and drop us off.

This time it was a chickenhouse fire in the northwest part of the county. Lots of departments involved - at least ten fire trucks of various sorts. Wolfskin, Beaverdam, Arnoldsville, Crawford, Winterville, Devil's Pond, Pleasant Hill, Salem VFDs all present (let me know if I missed anyone!). We worked on that until well into the mid-afternoon, before leaving.

Within 30 minutes after returning home, the pager went off for a return - they needed the WVFD tanker and all available manpower. I was off to work and so was unable to participate, but everyone was involved in that until at least 7pm Sunday night. This time Red Cross and EMS had special treats for everyone, and thanks to them for that.

A busy weekend in Oglethorpe County.

New Maps of the Wolfskin VFD District

2007-09-24T01:55:00.000-04:00

Any homeowner in the county can be assured that at least three departments will together be immediately paged for a structure fire. Our ongoing analysis will hopefully improve that response for some and lower insurance rates for others.

We wanted to know how the County defines the Wolfskin's primary district. For structure fires, the County automatically pages three departments; the primary department and two neighboring departments, so we wanted to know in which neighboring areas the County pages Wolfskin as one of those two automatic aid departments. This was thought to be known, in at least general terms, but conversations between Fire Chiefs suggested we had some of the details wrong.

The County's 1997 E-911 maps and current E-911 Dispatch by Address records has this information, and the modifed E-911 map here is one way to present it. Click here for a 0.8 Mb pdf of the entire area with higher resolution. Eventually, we will change to composites of The Oglethorpe County Tax Accessor Parcel maps on which to put this and other information we would like to know before arrival at an incident.

There are only a few surprises in the primary district. Lois Lane is not in their dispath lists (though we show it here). Dogwood Trail is in our primary district but Wolfskin Road between Faust Farm Road and HY 78 is in Crawford's primary district. No part of HY 78 is in our district. Most of it is assigned to Crawford.

Our automatic aid assignments are not always so logical. If possible, they are based on how fast particular departments can get to a particular address in another department's primary district. Although it appears that we should easily get to Bear Mill Road and lower Farm Faust Road, each are unimproved dirt and each requires fording (no bridges) of Barrow Creek. In practice we would have to take the trucks through Crawford. We would also have to go through Crawford to get the Tanker or Pumper to Lower Wirebridge Road in Maxey's primary district. You can also see some strange islands in our secondary converage. We can now get the Fire Chiefs to review their assignments and perhaps arrival times of secondary departments might improve if some reassignments were made.

It is difficult to show both primary and secondary coverage on one map, so our secondaries are not shown here. Crawford VFD is one of the two secondaries for all of Wolfskin. Arnoldsville VFD is the second one in the north and Maxey's is the second one in the south.

And now fundraising letters from Wolfskin VFD will clearly identify the three departments that protect the recipient.

On a related subject, the maps show the limits of the Georgia Militia District 227 (GMD 227 in red) which was one of thirteen established in Oglethorpe County. It only aquired the permanent name of Wolfskin long after the others. The origins of that name may be the subject of another post. Here, however, it is obvious that there is only a limited correspondence between the Wolfskin GM District and the Wolfskin VFD District. The other GMD in the county have met a similar fate. Although still used as political districts, they only roughly predict the limits of the Fire Districts in the area that may share the same name.

Hottest Month on Record

2007-09-01T06:05:00.000-04:00

That's my declaration, anyway, going over 110 years of data. By a smidge.

We were either amazingly lucky this past month, or folks around here were admirably careful. Or both. As far as I know there were only a couple of brush fires around Maxeys, and of course the big one near Vesta on that 107 degree day, August 10. It could have been much worse.

Your misery this past month did not go for naught. For Athens, August 2007 was not just the hottest August since "record keeping began in 1898", it was the hottest month period, edging out July 1993 by a hair. Our average daily high this month was 9 degrees higher than usual, for August.

Hold your head, here come some statistics:

We had an average daily high of 98.2 degF, approached only in July 1993 with an average daily high of 98.1 degF, and in July 1925, 96.9 degF. There were 13 days with temperatures of 100 degF or over, a record approached only in July 1925 with 10 days, August 1925 with 9 days, and July 1993 with 10 days. On two days this month my personal observations indicate that we came to within less than 1 degF of matching the highest temperature recorded, 108 degF. Officially we broke 110-year historical records on nine days. Officially we got only 47% the amount of rainfall average for August, are at 60% for 2007 to date, and 61% since Jan 2006.

Besides the record-breaking hot temperatures, in the end there were an astonishing 23 days in August at least one standard deviation above the 17-year average for that day; far above any other year except for the 26 days significantly above average in July 1993. There are usually 5 days significantly above average in August. There were no nights when the lows were at least one standard deviation before the average low.

Usually these sorts of extremes would reflect a deep La Nina in the equatorial Pacific. Not this time. We are in ENSO-neutral conditions and so we did it all by ourselves ;-) .

Helicopter Day

2007-08-25T07:16:00.001-04:00

Thursday night WVFD did our third training session with the good folks at Oconee County Volunteer Fire Department:

Oconee County is Oglethorpe's sister county to the southwest, one of five counties that surround Athens-Clarke County. Over the years they've been extraordinarily good to our little VFD, passing on used (sometimes barely used) equipment and turnout gear back in the days not so long ago when we didn't have anything.

You'll notice the "Station 1" in the photo above. OCFD has *eight* stations throughout the county. Its overall fire chief is Bruce Thaxton, who has gone out of his way to welcome and involve us each time we've joined them. (Station 1, btw, is a really fine and well-appointed one.)

Thursday night was helicopter air lift and rescue. We weren't sure exactly what to expect and arrived with our bags of PPE thinking it might be hands-on training. It wasn't, but that's ok. We had our hands on in the great chicken truck turnover last May.

Helicopters are so cool.

The demonstration was put on by Omniflight, which acquired Air Rescue 1 recently, if I understand correctly. It's a company that provides mutual aid to emergency medical services and fire departments. They themselves have a number of stations located strategically all over the northern half of Georgia such that they can provide an arrival time for trauma cases within an hour, and usually in half that time. Within another hour or less a case will have been delivered to an appropriate trauma center. When it's all said and done, in most airlift cases the cost and time of rescue, transport, and delivery will be less to the patient than if he or she had been carried by more conventional ground transport. And it's becoming much more common to use air transport. Air transport has become much more available, the definition of trauma is surprisingly broad now, and there are more and more trauma centers.

So you can probably tell that most of the training was in listening, and not so much in doing. The focus was in the background above, and then in safety procedures when working around a rescue helicopter. Unlike in the photos linked by the thumbnails below, the helicopter on the ground is almost always engaged with both rotors in motion.

Among the things we learned:

Fire fighters are going to bring their families to something like this. Lots of kids, wives (or husbands!), all excited and having a good time.

I mentioned that trauma is increasingly broadly defined: Heart attack. Stroke. Blood pressure or pulse above or below a certain point, regardless of injury.

All they need are coordinates provided by GPS. Many cell phones now give GPS coordinates. Maybe it's a good time to learn how to use yours - might as well put the evil things to good use ;-) .

The helicopter requires only 100 feet square in order to land, less in the daytime. This one landed in the parking lot next to the station, about 60 feet from the building.

Never move behind a line defined by the rear of the landing strut. Tail rotor and engine exhaust!

Always approach a helicopter from the front, never the sides and certainly never the rear.

The rotating blades are going to suck up any loose material. Including headgear and sheets on gurneys. That will put the helicopter out of commission and it will not leave.

Patients always go onto the stretcher feet toward the front.

These helicopters are sleek and small, yet there will be four people inside, including the patient.

Helicopters cannot see power lines from the ground. All they can see are the round tops of the power poles, and maybe a crossbar if there is one.

They won't airlift anyone who weighs much over 300 pounds.

And the thumbnails. If you look at the first one, you'll see black dots all over the image. That's not a dirty camera lens, it's flying debris. I guess that's something else we learned.

Oh - and the takeoff after the demo was delayed. A storm had moved in, with some spectacular lightning, just before they were ready to leave. They powered down and the pilot went inside the building to check the internets to see what to expect in the next few minutes.

--Wayne

Brush Fire, 10 August

2007-08-11T06:34:00.000-04:00

May you live in interesting times!

This was the setting at 3pm yesterday when we got the pageout along with all other 13 VFDs in Oglethorpe County. Extensive brush fire near Vesta, everyone come to the party! BYOW!

Well, we've got lots of W, 2500 gallons of it. I got to the station first this time, and had the tanker out and running. I was just locking everything up when Ed and Scott arrived, and off we went.

I wish I had taken the camera, now. It was indeed extensive, burning most of the length along the north side of Veribest Enterprise Road in northeast Oglethorpe County, and deep into the woods. That part of the county is probably 15 miles northeast of us, and the most distant fire we've been to so far.

We turned onto V-E Road and were directed all the way down to the other end, at the cemetary, where Vesta VFD had set up Incident Command for the VFDs. Lisa was already there, and had been for some time, running water up and down the road for rehab. The IC from Vesta directed us to pull up behind that li'l white truck there, and sit tight, after informing us of the location of the nearest hydrant (three miles away!). Andy arrived shortly after we got there, and The Unknown Firefighter was on his way.

At this point Georgia Forestry Commission had the fire mainly under control, and our role, as well as that of the other VFDs, was support if needed. We were there to provide water, and indeed did fill up one truck. Most of the other pumpers and knockers were targetted to houses in the area to protect them if necessary.

And then along about 7pm we were released and back home we went, stopping along the way to top off the tank and get gas.

A few observations:

We have *got* to get the Wolfskin name on the trucks!

I don't know when or how the fire started. The burn was so extensive it must have been involved for a considerable period of time. The part we could see looked basically like the results of a controlled burn - groundcover burned off but trees generally unharmed. (I'm not saying that that was the cause, but that the aftermath was what I've seen after controlled burns.)

As far as I can tell there was at least one truck from every VFD in the county. Plus EMS, Sheriff, and GA Forestry crew. Yet traffic along the road was well controlled and nondisruptive.

GA Forestry is superb. They had a spotter plane circling over all afternoon, presumably providing observations to the ground.

Residents of the area continually moved up and down the road offering water. Finally, a legitimate use for ATVs: water delivery. At less extensive fires there is normally a rehab station (and there probably was one here too), but in this case rehab came to us at regular intervals.

Apparently the fire was significant enough to have made the news earlier. One of us had actually heard about it on the radio and not his pager, and dropped by just as we were leaving the station.

The fire could have been much, much worse, given our past week of elevated temperatures and lack of rain since late July. There could have been wind. I'd have to attribute successful control to what I saw as very well-coordinated and competent firefighting. Coordination among 14 VFDs and Forestry is not necessarily an easy thing! Vesta VFD's Wayne Wallace did a great job.

Apparently no one got hurt, and it is possible to function at 107 degF!

*****I don't do this very often, because it seems unseemly to me, but occasionally I like to point out that every time we train or go out on a call we think about our Wolfskin neighbors who have generously supported us. On a day like yesterday, it's worth noting that every firefighter's eyes track that supertanker when it goes past. I'm not kidding you one bit. And it's not very often that we don't have a number of folks asking questions about it. WVFD has periodically been paged specifically for that supertanker, with its 2500 gallons of water. It is quite a resource, and the only one of its kind in the Oglethorpe County, so far! So once again, and I think I speak for my fellows, thanks to the Wolfskin residents for supporting us the way you have. We're very proud of you. ******

--Wayne

Extremely High Temperatures in Wolfskin

2007-08-10T09:40:00.000-04:00

That is yesterday's high here in Wolfskin, and it is to remind you that we are experiencing extremely high temperatures, and that without rain in the last few weeks things are a mite combustible. Yesterday's high in Wolfskin was 105.8 degF, and today is expected to be hotter. Today will be the fourth consecutive day of 110-year reoord breaking temperatures, and tomorrow will almost certainly be the fifth such day.

We discussed these matters and more at training, where, by the way one of our crew related that at least one 50-foot bored well in the area has gone dry. Elsewhere I predicted this, based on noting that our small creek at the 600-foot elevation level has run dry along half its length for the first time in 22 years.

Last night's pageout for the training came at 5:30pm, and although I didn't monitor 911 pageouts as scrupulously as usual, did note that there were no pageouts for training for the other fire departments in the county - usually there are half a dozen such. So the four of us were smug about that, with references to mad dogs, Englishmen, and Wolfskin.

Training was light, though. We pulled out the supertanker and tested out our new 3000 gallon drop tank, filling it with a full tank of water. The Unknown Firefighter disappeared briefly, and then returned in shorts with an air mattress and paddled around in the pool for a half hour or so. It is entirely appropriate for him to have anointed the much larger tank, since he did the lion's share of the work in acquiring it, to replace the somewhat damaged 2500 gallon one that we received when the truck arrived in 2006.

Note: water in tanker no longer potable ;-) .

--Wayne

An Evening at Lake Oglethorpe

2007-07-13T06:56:00.000-04:00

Continuing the backlog of photographed events at Wolfskin, a valuable training session from June.

This training session actually occurred on Thursday June 14, but it overlaps in some ways with last night's training so it fits reasonably well. The photographs are some of many taken by our civilian board member, Jerry Ledbetter, and many thanks to him for documenting the event.

A little history: When previous Fire Chief Phyllis Jackson began to revive the Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department five or so years ago, she called on old 1990s members (such as Glenn and me) to return. The monthly schedule was as before - First Thursday of the month, business meeting and Third Thursday of the month, training session. Years passed, Phyllis wore herself out writing grant proposals and obtaining equipment and by Mar 2006 that culminated in the receipt of a magnificent tanker, which you will see here, once again. And then Mike (who became fire chief at the end of last year) and The Unknown Firefighter joined us, took the Mod 1 training course early last year, and applied their considerable hardware and management skills. Our training sessions increased to a "supplemental" Second Thursday. After a couple of months, TUF said the *he* wouldn't mind a Fourth Thursday, I immediately concurred, and so it was that early this year *every* Thursday (except the First, which is still business) became training.

It's hard to point to any one thing that transformed the fire department from something just barely functional at the beginning of the new millenium to something that is now quite healthy and competent. There have been many changes and much work by Phyllis and others in that time. But the movement to training every week must certainly be among those items, and our training officers Ed and TUF, and Mike, come up with amazingly inventive and valuable training ideas.

One of the goals that Phyllis envisioned was to hone our skills at utilizing stream and lake water sources to fortify those swimming pools we call drop tanks. We do have access to several Clarke County hydrants that happen to be on the border of our counties, but we need to be able to draft from other sources, and the last few training sessions have revolved around that.

To orient you, here's a map of our general area. The last few Thursdays have been to develop tactics at utilizing Lake Oglethorpe, a 30-year-old artificial, monomictic lake created in the early 70s by damming Goulding Creek, about a mile upstream from us (orange box). There are two routes (green), one a longer circuitous one (Route A, through the Lake Oglethorpe neighborhood) that we used in training that resulted in the photos below. (A coupla weeks later we investigated Route B, the Wolfskin Road side of the dam, last night, but for various reasons (especially drafting from a vertical height of 15 feet above the lake) it will probably remain an emergency solution.)

Jumping a little ahead, we're already set up here at the edge of the lake on one side of the dam, which moves off to the middle right in the photograph. We're drafting from the edge of the lake into the tanker through that six-inch hose. A three-inch hose is being used to simultaneously deliver water to the monitor. That's a heavy piece of metal that operates from the ground, and can deliver a stream at 1000 gallons per minute quite some distance.

The thumbnails below open a larger version, on a new page. On the left we have R2D2, our strainer that pulls water as long as it's a few inches deep, at least. On the right we have not one but *two* drop tanks that we connected together in an experimental setup so we could have twice the amount of water with greater access for additional trucks.

Here's the setup after we got everything into place. The new tanker is the big red truck, and the lemon yellow "Margaritaville" is the old pumper. While the Margaritaville does have power steering, it lacks the digital bells and whistles of the tanker and is therefore a more MANLY truck. (The knocker of course, is the most manly truck of all.)

A few more views of the setup, and in operation. The first thumbnail is actually an early photograph setting up the droptanks and connecting them together. In the second the Margaritaville has been moved into place, and in the third it is pulling water from the droptanks and pumping it in a fog stream. (The fog stream is very neat - it results in a strong backdraft of air that is cooling and pleasant on a hot evening like this one was.)

The nozzle can also be operated as a straight stream of course, and Wolfskin 411 (me) is doing so here in the first thumbnail.

There's plenty of time to botanize, and The Unknown Firefighter found a nice deep blue mint that Wolfskin 418 (Glenn) and I are discussing while supposedly on backup. Our numbers, by the way, are 400 numbers, as Wolfskin VFD is designated by Oglethorpe County. Another fire department might be 600 series, and another might be 300 series. So you always know who you are. I myself was pleased to receive 411.

Just because we've finished at this site doesn't mean everything's over. We still have an hour or more to clean and roll up hoses, drain and put away the drop tanks, and generally retrieve and put away gear. And then the trucks have to be refilled and themselves put to bed.

Here's the *other* side of the dam, with the overflow pipe draining into the resumption of Goulding Creek. That water will eventually flow past our part of Goulding Creek a mile and more downstream.

--Wayne

Catchup, Drought, and Open House

2007-06-28T11:06:00.000-04:00

Once again, I have to declare myself remiss in keeping this blog up to date. In the next week or two I plan on catching up to the events in June, posted every few days.

Before I get started, something a little more topical.

Oglethorpe County, and the surrounding counties have now been added to the long list of counties formally in an extreme drought. That now totals 104 Georgia counties (out of 159) placed in that category, and of the rest all but two are at a level more severe than simply "moderate drought".

Athens-Clarke County has imposed level 3 water restrictions - outdoor watering only one day a week depending on even/odd address on Saturday or Sunday, respectively, and only between midnight and 10am. The North Oconee River intake has been shut down for reasons of low river water levels, the Middle Oconee River is next, and after that there's only the Bear Creek Reservoir to supply Athens with water. Here in Oglethorpe County we don't benefit from such bountiful supplies so that means we rely on wells which have their own dangers of drying up.

This drought is just being recognized but has been going on since late 2005, and if you look at the data, it's a part of a pattern that has continued uninterruped except for 2003 and 2005 since 1998. According to UGA's Climatology Research Laboratory, there is no end in sight.

So that means - be careful. Be very careful. Creeks are way down, ACC water supplies are in question, and that means that the water supplies used to fill up Wolfskin VFD fire trucks are in jeopardy. Don't do any outdoor burning. We don't want a South Georgia problem here.

On a more upbeat note was our June 2 Open House. This was a social event, which we hope to make a regular annual affair. Fire Chief Mike Geraci set up his grill and there were drinks and hotdogs for all. The attendance wasn't huge, but there was attendance from 10am until 2pm. It was great to see y'all and thanks for honoring us with your visit. One of the upshots was that we spent two Thursday nights cleaning up the station and getting everything in order, and that's always good.

A few photos from the event, taken by Tom and Gisela Gresham and many thanks to them for documenting the event. June 2 was, incidently, the day that the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry passed over us, making a fine cool day that ended up with an inch or two of much desired rain.

We had all three trucks out - the old knocker, which is used for wildland fire fighting, the lime-green pumper, our workhorse, and the celebrated supertanker, always in demand as a supplier of water.

We always have to fill the drop tanks for an event like this. They hold 2000+ gallons of water, and as you'll see later provide a reservoir for water wars. The Watermaster supertanker is providing the water for this treat, and you can see more about the arrival of the Watermaster here in March of 2006.

Our old pumper, the Margaritaville, which we're hoping to replace in the coming year, offered a convenient spot for rambling. It's a fine truck but has been upgraded and refurbished many times and has accumulated some problems.

Fire Chief Mike Geraci took on the task of explaining nomex hoods and a lot of other stuff to the best and brightest. He reports that he had trouble keeping up with all the questions.

And then he donned his PPE and SCBA to show the best and brightest how it all worked. His audience seemed impressed by the voice amplification capabilities of the BA system, and who wouldn't be?

The Unknown Firefighter put out two wildland firefighting backpack sprayers (that yellow thing). Well he's a scamp and knows exactly what would happen, and naturally water wars ensued. You can tell who was the primary victim - poor David. However he's getting excellent advice from Mrs. Geraci on how to fight back and his brother Paul looks on uneasily. With this mini-training session David is well on his way to being a volunteer firefighter.

This is the plaque that is now mounted on the passenger side of the supertanker. It commemorates the major donations from our Wolfskin Community in 2005 that allowed us to match federal funds for acquiring that marvelous piece of machinery.

And finally, the map of our southwestern part of Oglethorpe County. We're constantly updating these but this one shows with fair accuracy, in purple outlines, where the responsibilities for Wolfskin VFD lie (W).

A fine time was had by all.

--Wayne

Photos from Yesterday

2007-05-30T06:24:00.001-04:00

Here are some of the photos (taken by Louis Manglass of WVFD) that go with yesterday's post on the vehicle overturn on US 78. Click on a photo for a larger image in a new page.

All the metal you see here was part of the truck. The cab is in the center background, behind the group of rescuers. Note that everyone there is taller than the cab is now. There were at least three generators running most of the time, for supplying electricity for the implements of destruction used in the extrication.

WVFD pumper ("Margaritaville") on the left. We used it for fire protection during helicopter landing and takeoff. The very fine field is on the right, and as The Unknown Firefighter noted, it had no fireant hills! Not shown is the sweep we did prior to the landing to make sure there were no objects that could get sucked into the copter blades.

Wolfskin and Arnoldsville are on the hoses, just in case, but the landing was uneventful (except that it was very cool). The driver is being carried to the helicopter by Crawford VFD, Oglethorpe Rescue, and Oglethorpe EMS.

Tuesday Morning Callout

2007-05-29T11:32:00.000-04:00

Wolfskin VFD was paged out early in the morning this morning for an overturned vehicle accident on US 78 at the infamously dangerous Cherokee Corners going into town.

That particular stretch of 78 has been the scene of many bad accidents. Going into town you approach the danger zone after climbing a steep hill, cresting, and then starting down a steep hill on the other side, there is a rather sharp near-90 degree curve to the right. While the speed limit on this stretch is 45 mph, traffic invariably travels at 60 mph. It is a very busy two lane road and it is heavily travelled by all kinds of heavy haulers.

This one was a large truck carrying 5200 chickens, as I discovered after parking on the side and starting down the side of 78. Dead and stunned chickens everywhere.

Fortunately there was no fire involved, for the driver was pinned inside the twisted cab and had to be extricated. I didn't get involved with that other than to observe and learn a few things from a distance. Vehicle accidents always require fire assistance, just in case, which is why we were there. In our county, Oglethorpe Rescue generally does the extrications, and in this case was assisted by Crawford and Arnoldsville VFD. All the VFDs are assisting on backup in the event of fire, and that's what went on for the first hour. And all the while Oglethorpe EMS was working with the pinned driver.

In the second hour it was decided to order a helicopter brought in to convey the driver to Atlanta. A helicopter has to be able to land and there was a fine field without even fire anthills just a coupla hundred feet downhill.

There always has to be fire control presence at a helicopter landing and takeoff. So WVFD along with Arnoldsville VFD, scanned that nearby field for landing, got the handsome WVFD pumper into position, connected up the hoses, charged them, and waited. The helicopter landed at about the same time the driver of the truck was freed, and that was fun to watch from up close, waiting with charged hose, just in case.

And then the stretcher was loaded into the helicopter, it took off, and that was it. Someone else gets to clean up the chickens.

Of course, with a two lane highway, at rush hour, traffic was backed up one way and then the other for at least a mile. Glenn reports that a lot of drivers had their cell phones out videorecording as they drove past. So at least they had something to do, which probably explained their generally good behavior.

We ended up with eight from Wolfskin showing up and assisting and that was a very good turnout for us. Crawford and Arnoldsville VFD helped Oglethorpe Rescue with the extrication and fire protection at the immediate scene while Oglethorpe EMS did the crucial medical assist, and Arnoldsville VFD and Wolfskin VFD worked together on backup there and at the helipad site.

The Knocker, Or How to Fit a Big Truck Into An Incredibly Small Space

2007-05-11T06:20:00.000-04:00

This is Truck #3, the stepchild, some might think, compared to the new tanker. It's actually our oldest truck, and with its peculiarities and difficult driving, it's not surprising that we would call it #3. Nonetheless, and especially in our rural county, it's one of our most important and flexible tools. In keeping with the season, Mike and Ed organized the training session last night (and probably for a good many Thursdays to come) around using and operating it, and generally becoming reacquainted after the winter.

We were supposed to dress for the occasion. The season is wildland fire season, of course, as plants grow and temperatures climb and rain doesn't fall. Ed is in proper uniform - our lightweight wildland fire yellows and greens, with helmet. Glenn is protecting his eyes. They're messing with the generator, which is supposed to operate the krieg lighting, which some of us contemplate may actually have seen use in World War II.

The open compartment behind the cab is storage of various implements of destruction - McLeod rakes, shovels, fire rakes, and ...flappers. I should have taken a photo of the flappers. You've seen old photographs of pioneer women beating out a prairie fire with the household broom? That's sort of what a flapper is like. As TUF says, we have the entire free world's supply of flappers cornered right here in WVFD.

Back of the storage compartment is that trapezoidal part of the truck that Ed and Glenn are sitting on. That's the water tank, and it holds a respectable 900 gallons of water. That's another reason you don't make sharp turns.

The truck is usually referred to as the "knocker", I guess because it's used to "knock down" brush fires, and we also refer to it as the "brush truck", if we can't remember its ordinal. It's a joy to drive - it has no power steering. As FC Mike says, you don't make sharp turns in this baby, you *can't* make sharp turns. However it will go places we wouldn't want to take the other two trucks, and it does hold a complement of tools that we wouldn't ordinarily have at a structure fire.

That round thing at the back is a hose reel, for booster hose, which is sort of like super duper garden hose. We put another 50 feet on last night, as well as another 100 feet of conventional firehose for those hard to get places.

Unseen to the left of the hose reel is the pump itself. It's external, puts out quite a good stream, and a lot of noise. We emptied the entire tank last night practicing with it. Then refilled it from the tanker (since no one wanted to drive the knocker over the county line to fill it from a hydrant).

The knocker doesn't live in the spacious bay to the right in this photo. That's for the tanker. The knocker lives in the space you can barely see to the left of the open bay, in what we used to refer to as our kitchen.

I think I'll repost a photo from over a year ago, just to be sure everyone knows - we used to have a kitchen, but gave it up because we needed the space to shelter a truck. I think that even in Oglethorpe County, there can't be many who would be able to claim this.

Combined Training Second Thursday April 19

2007-04-20T06:27:00.000-04:00

Last night's training involved fire hydrant hookups, putting out liquid fuel fires, and drop tank filling and suction. That's quite a variety of exercises!

That was another of our Wolfskin VFD training sessions that has combined with the Mod One class that's been taught since March. Those combinations have been great, both in terms of better learning through repetition, and getting to know some of the other firefighters in the area - Glade, Crawford, Arnoldsville - who have participated both as hosts and participants.

I haven't been able to attend many of those classes, due to work, but Mike, Ed, Glenn, Jim, and The Unknown Firefighter have done a fantastic job organizing and delivering this course to ten students. Two of them will stay with us at Wolfskin, and the others are with VFDs in other parts of the county.

Everyone liked the liquid fuel fire exercise last night. Looks like a barbecue grill but perhaps a little hot for that, not to mention the fumes. Another clever construction put together by TUF:

Jim, in his guise as Environmental Protection Guy, shows the proper way to put out such a fire, with a fire extinguisher:

He then demonstrated the improper way, and why it doesn't work: with water. This was an exercise that no one could get enough of.

I have a little backlog of training photos that will be posted periodically over the next week.

--Wayne

Firefighter Weekend

2007-03-28T07:43:00.000-04:00

Firefighter Weekend for 2007 is over now, and we're all apparently back safe and sound. The event was held at the Forsyth Georgia Public Safety Training Center campus, and went from Friday Mar 23 through Sunday Mar 25. Apparently 900 firefighters from around Georgia attended.

Seven of us from Wolfskin attended. Our usual Wolfskin festivities were fairly limited this year - some of us were there Fri-Sat, and some Sat-Sun, and our overlaps were infrequent. I think we can point out that the mean and median age of our Wolfskin contingent was somewhere around 52 years old. It would be nice to see that become lower rather than increase next year!

I'm not going to be able to offer much detail on the courses that I didn't take, since I haven't talked to our fellows much yet, but here's the breakdown:

Pat and Mike were there Fri-Sat, and took two courses, both of them very much physically involved. Friday was the course on getting out of bad situations, and I did catch the description of getting out of an upper story window onto a ladder quickly. Saturday was Pressurized Container, where you have the opportunity to approach a venting propane tank through a curtain of water with the goal of turning the very hot valve off.

David took the Saturday Pressurized Water Systems & Supplies course. I've taken this one two years ago so I know it's a fairly involved calculation course for figuring out what pressures to apply to hoses of different sizes and hooked up in different configurations and situations, so that you can get good flow from all outlets.

The rest of us were there Sat-Sun, and it was rather lonely without the other three around. Indeed, Sunday was pretty dead in general - it looks like most folks did the Fri-Sat courses.

Louis and Ed took the course on Preparing for the Initial Attack at a Scene (I can't remember the precise title). This is going to be particularly important, since it undoubtedly involves strategy - strategy that has to be summed up within minutes of reaching a scene. We're going to have to pick their brains over this one.

And Glenn and I took the Incident Safety Officer course. I can go on and on about this - it was a good solid course and meshes well, I think, with Louis and Ed's selection.

“Incident Safety Officer” is a two-day complex introductory course that addresses something we as a department don’t really have, and should. The basic message is that all incident responses need to be mounted with restrictions informed by safety and risk issues. This philosophy has now permeated all levels of firefighting response to the extent that the Safety Officer has veto power over the Incident Commander’s plan, though we were cautioned that exercising that kind of power should be wielded with caution, lest powerful personality conflicts emerge.

One of the disconnects that we always feel a little bit of was always in evidence, although the instructors are aware of it and do their best to address everyone’s concerns. Indeed they do a very good job of covering the field for everyone; I have to admit that. This is, of course, that most of the class consists of professionals who train every day and run into incidents all the time. That’s in contrast to us volunteers, who train (in our case) four times a month, and have maybe as many incidents in that time. It’s a huge safety issue, since it’s riskier for volunteers who are not constantly practicing and honing their techniques and responses. The risks for volunteers are higher for everything, but especially driving personal vehicles to and from the station, driving a firetruck to and from a fire, and heart attacks.

The “current issues” section of the course was especially interesting. Wildland firefighting was treated, not particularly well, we discovered, but then we’ve had the 40-hour course last June and in this one instance probably knew more than the instructor (indeed we had a particular bone to pick with him, and Glenn did later, in private). There were emphases on roadway incidents that are particularly important for us, and a section on terrorist incidents. The latter was something that I had a vague set of preconceptions about, but now I realize the potential is somewhat greater than I had recognized, and the complexities of response much more involved.

The potential is greater because the majority of terrorist incidents are domestic, and can involve assaults just about anywhere - family planning clinics, alternative lifestyles gathering places, and religious institutions (their words, not mine) were listed as targets. And the complexities involved included the potential for secondary attacks, once responders get there: a secondary bomb placed at a fire hydrant in one of the Atlanta bombings was actually something that our instructor had encountered. While not strictly an example of the latter, we also went over booby-trapping, and it is relevant in Georgia because of the large number of home-style meth labs that are being encountered. In that case milk jugs filled with gasoline had been tied with fishing line above and hidden by the room ceiling, so that in the event of a fire or discovery, they would drop onto the responders below, and ignite.

Last but not least, here's an image of a very small part of the campus, as viewed from our dorm room. Our dorm room, however functional (and do they really use old kevlar vests to stuff their pillows with?), came this year with a western view of one of the several ponds on campus. There was turtle action in the evening, and a pair of geese guarding a nest in the foreground wetland grasses:

I'm impressed by the GPSTC campus every time I see it. A drive through campus, perhaps going from one complex to another, can net a number of strange sights. That drive is going to take awhile, but you do NOT want to exceed the 25 mph speed limit, not here. This is not *just* a firefighting academy - it is a complex of training centers for every facet of public safety.

Over there is the bombing range, but I suspect they don’t use that during a specialized weekend like ours, at least, we’ve never witnessed any bombs going off. Over that hill are two entangled cars frozen in mid-wreck, and yes, they are there for extrication training. If you’re lucky, you might see a 300-foot plume of flame shooting into the air, and that would be the pressurized container course that Pat and Mike took. And that road leads to the mock village, where all sorts of terrible things happen to the mock inhabitants.

Over beyond the far-away building in the background of the above photo, unseen, is the inmates' complex, for this campus is also a prison, primarily for youthful offenders. It’s fairly minimum security, and the inmates do most of the day-to-day operations - they bus tables in the cafeteria, clean the dorm rooms during the day, do much of the upkeep on the campus, and even run the fire station for the campus. You’re not supposed to interact in any way with them, there are lockers in the dorm rooms where you have to lock in all your items before leaving for the day, and handguns and alcohol are not permitted on campus.

All in all, a great weekend that at least gave me a big boost. It's always like that - the usual reluctance for signing up weeks ahead, the angst just before driving off for a lost weekend, and then afterward everything is wonderful and it was completely worthwhile. As I should have known in the first place!

--Wayne

Flood Watches, Fire Hazards, and the First Mod 1 Training

2007-03-04T06:49:00.000-05:00

Strangely, we are both in a Flood Watch and a Fire Hazard Warning at the same time. The winds of yesterday and today are drying things out rapidly above the flood-prone areas affected by Thursday's 10-year rain. Watkinsville area, 10 miles to the southwest, is in a 3+(upper high), and Washington, GA 40 miles to our east is in a Level 5 alert (extreme). That's the best we can do to estimate our own area, since it isn't specifically indicated at the Georgia Forestry Commission's Fire Danger Rating.

Yesterday, Saturday, was the first installment of the 2-month-long Mod 1 Basic Firefighting training course put on by Wolfskin VFD and organized by FC Mike Geraci. I wasn't able to be there, since I was continuing to observe the flooding and effects along Goulding Creek, but Glenn said that it went very well. Ten students, rapid PPE dress, all instructors present.

Mike might have more to say about it, but it sounds like a success to me.

No Fire Hazard Today

2007-03-02T10:40:00.000-05:00

After 4.5" rain yesterday and last night, and a snug, warm gathering of firefighters and our good civilians Bill and Jerry last night, we can't complain about dry conditions.

I admit I'm a little biased toward the left side of Wolfskin Road (as you go northeast), because that's where I live, and so this is what our watershed, Goulding Creek, looked like this morning. (Folks on the right of Wolfskin Road will just have to take their own pics of Barrow Creek to get comp time.)

On the left is what Goulding Creek looked like three weeks ago. The left photo is slightly compressed compared to the right, but not by a helluva lot. The leaning tree on the right, and the fallen tree in the foreground, should orient you. On the right (as if you needed to be told) is what it looked like today:

Scanning over the records in the Athens area, yesterday's rainfall was number 14 in 120 years of records.

--Just for fun, Wayne

The Month of February

2007-02-27T07:32:00.000-05:00

As noted below our big fire call was the structure fire Feb 7 in southwest Wolfskin District. For some of us this was the largest conflagration we've experienced.

But as also noted there was a vehicle fire earlier that week, and the notable thing was that it netted us a new enthusiastic beginning firefighter, who along with Scott, will have attended all the meetings this month and will both be taking FC Mike's intensive Mod 1 Course (see header at top of page) in March and April.

There was, in addition, a wildland fire technically in Athens-Clarke County at the edge of western Wolfskin on Sunday, Feb 18, I believe it was. It was a relatively small fire, about an acre in size, but Athens-Clarke County did request support from Wolfskin VFD and FC Mike was on the road with our old white knocker and at the scene within 15 minutes. He was joined by at least six or seven others of us within a few minutes more, and followed the directions of the ACC Incident Commander. A very good performance that was rewarded by the thanks and praises of the professional firefighters of Athens-Clarke County.

I believe that counts three fires we responded to in February, correct me if I'm wrong. Good job, everyone.

Can't forget to mention the Oglethorpe County Firefighters Association meeting on Tuesday Feb 20, in which Mike and the Unknown Firefighter were recognized as Rookies of the year, and Frankie was very appropriately awarded our highest recognition - Firefighter of the Year, from Wolfskin. Our Frankie is the guy who keeps the trucks and firestation apparatus working, and we could not do without him.

The fete of the evening was, of course, Our Phyllis. Fire Chief for longer than some of our firefighter babes can remember, we had the opportunity to snag her for special recognition after twenty plus years of running things from the early years, ca 80s, until last year when she asked that we lift the burden. From the dark ages, the mid 90s until four years ago, she and WingateD and JimK kept things going by themselves. And then about four years ago Phyllis got us all back together again. What would Wolfskin Community have done without Phyllis? There are fewer people than there should be who know the difference she's made.

There's no single crowning glory for Phyllis, but there is this, which would mark a pinnacle for anyone. Let me emphasize this, if I may. If you didn't catch the arrival of the Watermaster Supertanker, and if you didn't catch what I think are some really ecstatic photos of Phyllis, then GO HERE NOW!. It was a big day for all of us, and really did sort of mark a rite of passage.

Congratulations to Phyllis, Mike, The Unknown Firefighter, and Frankie especially, and as soon as Phyllis gets me photos I'll post them (but not of TUF, of course).

The training sessions during the month of February really deserve a post of their own, and perhaps I will shortly. Mike and Ed have put together some amazing sessions this month. We're now doing three Thursdays a month of training, and nine or ten firefighters are showing up for each session.

Third Thursday was the hose maze, crawling around in the dark with BA finding your way out of the building without vision and only by following the hose. I'm pleased to report that the Unknown Firefighter and I made it out in 7 minutes, a 4 minute lead over our nearest contenders. Combine that with training on drafting from the portable drop tank (holds 2000 gallons) as well as nursing from the watermaster tanker, and it was a big evening.

Fourth Thursday was ladders. Simple, you say, but you'd be wrong. There's a choreography here that has to be seen to be believed. Deploying the ladder, getting it to the site, and raising it are all done with a flair that the Unknown Firefighter described as written up by caffeine-maddened bureaucrats with a control problem. Anyway, we scurried up 15 feet of extension ladder to the top of a gasoline drum out back, and then sprayed water from the top of a roof ladder set atop the famous WVFD barbecue pit building out back.

And that was the month of February. Who knows what March will hold in store for us, but the tentative schedule is at the top of the page.

--Wayne

Wolfskin District

2007-02-18T07:53:00.000-05:00

We here at WVFD have had a number of reasons for wanting to get a good idea of the extent of our community. We're working right now on a map that defines the boundaries in a way that will assist us in several ways, not the least of which is a nice wall-sized map of the area. We want a county-wide map, of course, but a county is way too big for our primary responsibility area. Within Oglethorpe County areas are mapped out by 911 Emergency definitions, watershed definitions, Fire Districts, insurance maps, all kinds. Here I suggest that at least some, if not many, of those definitions can be traced to a map drawn up more than two hundred years ago.

The maps that I present here are from one I had located from this source for a finely detailed map of Oglethorpe County. I spent quite a number of hours downloading sections and pasting them together and coloring in roads and creeks.

The other day I was idly googling for the origin of the name "Goulding" as in Goulding Creek, and ran across this site which details the history of militia districts in Oglethorpe County. It appears that Wolfskin District is mentioned as early as 1797, formed for the purpose of defense during post-Revolution colonial times.

(That site, by the way, is an extremely interesting source for information about Oglethorpe County history, including scans of maps from the 1800s onward, prominent families in Oglethorpe County, and essays on towns. It is part of the USGenWeb Project, and you might just find your county listed there.)

The other districts on this map are also still in evidence - Beaverdam, Crawford, Lexington, Glade, Goosepond - all retain their names. Falling Creek District doesn't ring a bell for me, but might now be referred to as the District under Maxeys's jurisdiction.

The reason that this is of interest is that the outlines of the militia districts appear to have been conscripted for present day fire protection responsibilities. That is, Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department has primary responsibility for the region fully outlined in purple in this section of the detailed, colorized map:

(I have linked the above, admittedly fuzzy map to a much better, larger 373KB map for local readers who might want to print it out. And I also have a much, much larger 1.8MB map of the entire county, rather than just the above section, but email me if you want it.)

This doesn't tell the whole story. Arnoldsville VFD to our north would appear to be part of Crawford Militia District, and yet it has its own fire jurisdiction today, so some changes have been made. The above map should not be taken as accurate even for WVFD. It simply appears that at least some present-day fire jurisdictions have derived from late 18th century militia districts. But how accurate is it?

Present day fire jurisdictions are multiple and overlapping - there are Primary Responsibility districts, which the purple above purports to outline, and then there are overlapping lines that map out Automatic Aid from neighboring districts. Automatic Aid refers to structure fires, considered to be rather important. If WVFD is called out for a structure fire in its Primary jurisdiction, then our Automatic Aid friends, Arnoldsville to the north, Crawford to the northeast, and Maxeys to the south, will be automatically paged too. (Each VFD has a number - WVFD is F4, and each member has his or her own number that starts with that one - I am 411, and Glenn is 418. Maxeys is F3, Crawford is F6, Arnoldsville is F11. And so on. Too much information, I know, but this is documentation, right?)

As it turns out, all those assignments are made by 911, with input from the fire chiefs in the county. It may surprise some, but we didn't have 911 here in Oglethorpe County until about ten years ago - we even had to vote in a referendum to get it. But now that we have it, all maps are standardized to that. The nice thing is that 911 will give us, if we ask nice, maps of the area along with details like road names and address numbers.

Glenn has located a map of those assignments and is in the process along with Bill, one of our civilian WVFD Board members, of applying that so that we eventually have a full-featured wall-sized map. But we can at least test the "militia district hypothesis" here.

Here is a blowup of the area to our southeast, along Bull Bray Road.

The jagged horizontal purple line is the demarcation between "Falling Creek" (now referred to as Maxeys) and Wolfskin, according to the late 18th century militia district lines. I've noted three addresses along this road and circled them in red. 911 claims that Wolfskin has jurisdiction from Box 476 to Box 869, and Maxeys has jurisdiction from Box 0 to Box 475B. It really looks to me like the militia district lines successfully predict the 911 assignments, and that the county fire chiefs used those lines as a guide to drawing up primary responsibility areas a decade ago.

Now you might ask, "who cares, Wayne?" Well, here's something: we ask for donations now and then, and we don't want to go outside our area and trod on the feet of our adjacent VFDs. Here's something else, which complicates things a bit: fire insurance is graded in Classes, and we are at Class 9 right now, which means, well, not very good. We want to be Class 8B, which will save all the residents of the Wolfskin District a fair amount of money. So we need to know who would be promised that Class change. But the Insurance Service Organization that makes those assignments doesn't necessarily follow the 911/militia maps, and we have to determine who we can promise and who we can't. That's the next step: How does the ISO divvy things up?

Oh yes, Goulding Creek. Did I ever find the origin of the name "Goulding"? No, but it is interesting that one of the militia captains (1820-1821) is Thomas W. Golding. None of the maps at the USGenWeb site is detailed enough, except possibly the 1894 map, to show Goulding Creek, and that one is 70 years in Captain Golding's future. Miss Flossie Smith might have something to say about this, but it's a little hard to get her book!

--Wayne

Feb 15 Third Thursday Training

2007-02-16T07:36:00.000-05:00

A busy and productive training session for the seven of us who attended. Temps were around 30 degF but PPEs and crawling around on the floor make you warm.

WVFD Fire Chief Mike Geraci's email this morning:

Great training session last night……..

Hose maze always a good reminder of the basics to ensure we all go home at the end of an incident and the drafting / nursing enabled us to increase our confidence in our ability to sustain a water supply.

Appreciate all the enthusiasm and participation.

Make plans to attend the FF Association meeting next Tuesday. FF of the year / Rookie of the year recognition. Covered dish as well. I don’t have the details on time and location nailed down. Lisa, can you help with that????

Be looking for details on our Mod I course schedule shortly.

Thanks again for all the support, Mike

And there you have it. Several things were going on.

First up was setting up and filling the drop tank, a big swimming pool thing for holding a couple thousand gallons of water for general drafting by trucks on the scene. NO PROBLEMS! Unless you count wanting to move 500 gallons of water instead of moving the truck. NOTE: use padding under the tank. Sometimes we have to walk around in the swimming pool, and don't want to poke holes. Also - close up the drain before pumping water into tank :-)

Second: Hose Maze! Prizes for the fastest (The Unknown Firefighter and I won at 7 minutes). Lisa set up a maze of snaking hoses in the firehouse and the object is to crawl about and follow them with PPE and BA tanks, blind, with hoods pulled down over the face masks and in the dark. TUF is an excellent navigator with great communication skills. Smooth bump bump to the pump! - Mike

Third: Drafting into the Margarita truck from the drop tank. Couldn't have gone better. Should have photographed the setup for documentation. Got the pump primed quickly, started it up, and the truck was sucking water into the pump and out of the booster hose.

Fourth: Nursing by the Margarita from the Tanker. Setup was a little slower - we'd done it before about six weeks ago and no one wrote anything down. Note to me: bring camera! Finally figured out the connections. We need a properly sized connector for hooking the six-inch hose at the Margarita intake. Were reduced to using the 2-inch (?) intake with a reducer coupling, but we DID figure it out. The pumper then sucks water directly out of the tanker and pumps it directly into a hose.

Fifth: Cleanup and refilling of the tanker. No problem - we've got that down.

It was a three-hour session but everyone was pleased.

--Wayne

Busy First Week in February

2007-02-07T08:37:00.000-05:00

It's always a pleasure to get called out for a fire at 4am and meet up with your fellow firefighters at a time when most people don't have get-togethers. It's too bad that the Hospitality Truck didn't make it with cookies and coffee, but we'll get over it.

This one was a big one. A storage building filled with lots of vehicles and equipment, and the added touch - a propane tank that went up. Wolfskin was first on the scene, but at least five other VFDs were involved and there were a total of at least ten firetrucks, and probably fifty firefighters. With that number you might expect chaos, and it certainly looks like chaos, but in fact things went quickly and in a very orderly fashion.

One of the peskiest problems was a large truck filled with pine straw bales that had been ignited. Burning compressed pine straw is very difficult to put out, and that situation occupied several of us for the entire three hours, pulling out pine straw and quenching it, then pulling out more. It's a task that couldn't be accomplished without those nice SCBA tanks that supply you with air for twenty minutes or so.

Unofficially, the building was a complete loss, of course, as were at least half a dozen vehicles that had been stored close by or in it and were involved upon arrival. But the fire didn't spread to any other structure close by and that was the main thing.

This actually wasn't the only callout in the past week. We were all on our way to our First Thursday business meeting last week when there was a call out for a vehicle fire nearby. That one only involved our own VFD, but it rated both our pumper and tanker.

And in neither case did I take the camera :-(

January Structure Fire Training

2007-02-03T06:13:00.000-05:00

I should have gotten this up ten days ago.

On January 20 four of us - Phyllis, Mike, Ed, and the mystery guest - went to Washington, GA for a structure fire training course. All are old pros at this by now but it's a good refresher and apparently 24 hours are required per year for Class 8 fire insurance purposes.

This one was a little different than the one described in November. There we had actual houses to burn down, a fairly rare opportunity, but the action was all at one level. Here the structure is a metal building whose sole function is to be burned down, over and over, and the action takes place at two levels. It's a more rigorous training, since heavy hoses have to be dragged quickly up and down stairways.

Phyllis sent the following two pictures, with the narration below:

2 pics--that's all I brought to UGA to send on fast
internet. I took no action pics because either I was
in the action, or it was too hot for camera. The
photographer didn't have much unassigned time to
wander at leisure.

First - Aliens - Ed standing, pointing to Darth Vader
on 2nd Floor Back-Up assignment. Interior team is locating and
extinguishing fires on 2 floors. Negotiating the
stairs with hose & gear is the hard part.

Second - YES! We're done. Phyllis, Ed, Mike. Survived
one more time, and good time had by all! Already had
part of our PPE stripped off by picture time. Mike,
you look good in white.

Nice outfits, I think, and they're getting well worn too. Thanks from the rest of us to all who went.

Firefighter Weekend

2007-01-15T16:14:00.000-05:00

Firefighter Weekend is March 23-25 in Forsyth, Georgia. Ed has sent the list of courses available. Call him to register and for more information: 706-546-5539.

Structure Fire Control will be offered each of the 3 days
Pressurized Container Fire Control on Sat. (24th) & Sun. (25th).

Other courses available (some 8 hrs., some 16) are:

GA. Fire Incident Reporting System (GFIRS) (16 hrs)
Handling Flammable & Combustible Liquid Incidents (16)
Haz Mat Annual Refresher (8)
Incident Safety Officer (16)
Pressurized Water Systems & Supplies (8)
Pump Service Testing (8)

Second Thursday Training

2007-01-12T08:25:00.000-05:00

There were only four of us, but we had a rollickin good time.

A personal aside - I'd brought a couple of printouts of some presumptive white oaks that have extremely scaly bark. Our hydrant man (see below) is quite a good tree botanist so I thought to challenge him on whether these were really white oaks, or a population of two other rather rare related species. We didn't come to a conclusion, but it serves as an example of something or other.

But white oaks aren't why you're here!

Last night, we played mostly with the lime green truck, the Margaritaville, engaging the drive transmission into the pump and getting the three main steps to success just right. Yes, it was cold but the PPEs are warm and this is the best time of year to be wearing them.

The new nozzles - and aren't they nice? - arrived and we had quite a fine evening checking them out. We got both trucks out and yanked out a bunch of hose and sprayed a lot of water. The new nozzles have two twist controls - one for character and one for volume - and they're a hard rubber star wars blaster kind of thing. Everyone who picked one up was inexorably drawn to pointing it at someone else and saying, "pow". Cool.

Of course we must top off the trucks after expending water, so we went up to the county line to fill the truck with water from their hydrant. With the Margaritaville, we do it the easy way. Rather than intravenous injection of water from the hydrant, a couple of us sit on top of the truck holding on tightly to the connected hose and direct the flowing water directly into the tank. This affords the other two of us with the opportunity for fun, as our all-too-clever hydrant man schemes: "Und now, ve turn zis up all ze way und ve launch zem into space!"

There was brief discussion to end any confusion that training sessions are the second and third Thursdays (they are), but our eclectic hydrant man mentioned above asserted that he'd be just as happy if we had a FOURTH Thursday training session.

Well, now, that's an interesting idea. Of course, you have to be very careful with the hydrant man - not only is he a good tree botanist, he's also a cunning trickster. But still, it needn't be a full fledged training session; we could think of it as a short maintenance session. Start up and run the trucks for a few minutes to keep batteries charged and the trucks certain of their places in our hearts. Meanwhile do a little chatting (that's where most of the planning and exchanges get done anyway), and come and go as we please. Sounds like a good idea to me. Ed? Mike?

--Wayne

Annual Members' Meeting Thursday Dec 7, 7pm

2006-11-27T09:15:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-17T13:32:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-15T16:15:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-05T06:48:00.000-05:00

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

Fire Hazard - Extreme

2006-10-15T10:15:00.000-04:00

From The Georgia Forestry Commission, their fire hazard map of Georgia.

I don't think I've seen us in purple before, not even in early June when it was not only dry, but also hot. The small amount of rain received twice in the last couple of weeks didn't really make it into Oglethorpe County. We haven't had any rain since early September.

Thursday, and then again Friday, saw WVFD called out twice for a brush fire off of Wire Bridge Road. We're now into deer hunting season, primitive weapons at the moment, and there are plenty of hunters who aren't familiar with the area and its condition.

The predictions are for rain beginning late Monday and lasting into Tuesday, and that will help a lot.

But in the meantime, be very careful.

-Wayne

After the Long Wait, NEWS

2006-10-11T08:03:00.000-04:00

My apologies for the lack of posting lately. It's embarrassing to look at the June 23 date of the previous posting, but from midsummer on came a flurry of emergencies and unexpected obligations and so posting has been nonexistent since then. I will be remediating that now. (I would like to remind WVFD and community members that they can send their info or suggestions for a post to me, at hughes@plantbio.uga.edu .)

During the summer a second monthly supplemental training session was established. At first it was on Tuesdays. Good news for those who have night jobs and reserved Thursdays for VFD work: the sessions will now be on Thursday evening.

And that means Thursday Oct 12 at 6:30pm for the next supplementary training session.

We will probably begin preparing to take the Structure Fire course Saturday Nov 4 in Thomson Georgia. We'd also like two more applicants for that, since teams usually number Six, and we currently have Four. Get in touch with Ed Frey at freyinsurance@yahoo.com for more information if you're interested. Structure Fire courses are always fun, and should be taken on an annual basis.

But the crowning achievement came a month ago. Fire Chief Phyllis Jackson and two WVFD firefighters visited Winder Fire Department (Winder GA) and were gifted with 1200 feet of 3" hose. This is an extraordinary donation from the Winder Fire Department. It's a necessity for us, who have a number of structures in the area that really need that kind of output of water if required, and is required for our efforts to reduce the insurance level in the area from Class 9 to Class 8. WVFD thanks the Winder FD for their generosity in this gift, as well as others.

-Wayne

Maybe a Break in the Weather

2006-06-23T15:35:00.000-04:00

The last week of extraordinarily high temperatures, complete with no rain since early June, may be coming to an end.

Yesterday was a 108-year record breaker, and with temperatures today cresting at 102.5 degF where I am, today will be too.

However, good news in the forecast from the National Weather Service. Not only are we expecting 50% chance of rain through Monday, but much lower temperatures as well - mid 80s. I can deal with right now for that little gift. Watch out for lightning though, in the early stages.

Update...
the next few days are going to prove to be very active across Georgia.
Weak front and upper trough approaching from the north which will
stall over the region Sat-Mon...then finally get pushed out early
Tuesday as upper trough strengthens and pushes further east.
Meanwhile...a weak tropical low will approach the area from the
southeast late in the weekend. With all of these systems stalling
over the area Sat-Mon...it appears that it will be a very wet
period. All areas should receive substantial rainfall...at least 1-2
inches in most areas by Monday...locally even more. Given the dry
conditions in place...this should not be a problem...at least in the
short term...but by sun will need to monitor for possible Flood
Watch as tropical system works into the area...

Saved by another tropical depression!

Just to celebrate our misery and impending redemption, here's what June has looked like so far for the Athens area. Green line is 2006, red line is 2005. The 108-year historical high is in blue. The black dots are the high temperatures for each June day since 1990.

Burning During a Drought - Don't Do It!

2006-06-15T07:32:00.000-04:00

It seems to fall to me to be the Wolfskin Scold. So be it.

In the past week Wolfskin has been called out for wildland fires four times. In three of these cases the problem has been homeowners doing a "controlled burn". As far as I know, in none of these cases did the homeowners call Georgia Forestry Commission for a permit. Folks - you must call for a permit. At the very least you get good advice and it helps to protect you if the fire gets out of control. We can imagine the worst-case scenario.

Look - in the past 13 days here in the Wolfskin area we have had exactly 0.05" of rain. In March, April, and May we had 3.0", 1.55", and 1.4" of rain. So far in June we've had 0.45". Alberto didn't help us much at all, except to cool things down a bit and produce some gusty winds. We normally get 4.5" per month. This is WAY below what we should be getting.

The ground is dry, the vegetation is dry, the temperatures are way higher than normal, and we've been at least a Class 3+ day (high fire danger) for the last two weeks (a few days ago we were at the highest, Class 5 - extreme fire danger). It's not rocket science to know that if you're burning stumps, say, which you should not be doing in this kind of weather, and you go off to work the next day and the smouldering stumps light your yard on fire that this is a problem. Armed with this scenario, you certainly shouldn't be relighting the stumps the next night. If you are a neighbor watching this, you have a right to complain. I shudder thinking about the 50-acre pasture of dry grass across the road, and the dozen or so houses that sit right on that pasture.

Be aware that GFC does not like to see fires going on into the late afternoon. In the evening and night the smoke stays low to the ground and annoys people. 911 gets calls about smoke smells and that annoys them.

Go to the right sidebar - the Georgia Forestry Commission phone number is there. The website is there, and you can apply for a permit on that website. The Georgia map of fire danger is there too. Don't burn if it's a Class 3 day or above.

Here's another convenient GFC page - Forecast Conditions. Don't let your eyes cross too much. Here's the way you interpret the numbers, but I'll give you a little crash course on what to look for right here.

Believe it or not I look at this every day. On Tuesday night, when I saw the stump fires burning I predicted we'd be called out and the next day at 1pm we were.

For our area I scroll down and look at the Watkinsville entry, and maybe the Washington, GA entry. If you're elsewhere, look for the entry closest to you. If you're outside of Georgia, you might find a link to your area here.

Look at the maximum temperature, wind conditions, and relative humidity. Afternoons are going to be the worst conditions. Here is danger, Will Robinson. Max temps, 90 degrees or higher. Wind conditions, greater than 10 mph. Relative humidity during the afternoon, 40% or lower. Bad, no, don't do it! These are at *least* the conditions we're in right now at this moment.

There's two other indices to look at:

The BI - the burn index. Divide it by 10. That's the height of the flames you might see, in feet. Of course it depends on what kind of land is burning and it isn't the best index, but if it's greater than 100, DON'T BURN. Do you think you can deal with 10-foot flames? I don't.

The KBDI number. It ranges from 0 (wet) to 800(extremely dry) and tells you how dry the soil is. The top part of the soil does burn. Right now we are at a KBDI of 550. These are very dry soil conditions.

Here's the GFC forecast for today:

Max temps: 93 degrees F (hot)
Wind: 3mph (calm, not bad, but in view of everything else, bad)
Relative Humidity: 33% this afternoon (very dry)
Burn Index: 15 (expect 1.5-foot flames, depending on fuel)
KBDI: 550 (very dry).

All this adds up to a high hazard Class 3-plus day, and for the next five days it's just going to get worse. And yet the folks burning the stumps are doing it again, and again they're going to go off to work leaving them burning. I predict we're going to get another call today.

-Wayne

Very Early Morning Call

2006-06-14T05:12:00.000-04:00

No pics here: 4:30am Monday morning - Wolfskin gets a live test of taking care of a woodland fire. The pager goes off, car on fire somewhere on Double Bridges Road, Wolfskin called out. We were already up, the nocturnal animals (during the summer) that we are, but by the time we were dressed and at the station at 4:45 the pumper was already gone. Maybe Mike and Frankie are nocturnal animals too, but they were still ahead of us! So we proceeded on down Double Bridges Road and found the situation close to Highway 78. Someone had apparently torched a car on the side of road and the fire had spread to a quarter acre or so of woods.

A phenomenal ten folks showed up from Wolfskin by 5am and two Athens-Clarke County trucks and an Arnoldsville truck. I'd name us all but some folks don't want to be named so take my word for it.

Athens-Clarke County took care of the car; we patrolled the woods putting out the fire, avoiding the festoons of poison ivy, and then wet mopped for an hour or so. It was actually kind of invigorating, in an early early morning sort of way, and it was real nice to see our partners all there. Later A-CC came back and drenched the woods to be sure.

Our PPE pants, gloves, and shirt are finally broken in, smudged, and hanging out to dry. I have no intention of washing them until that dirt and smut becomes ingrained - it’s a kind of record of activity that we don’t want to erase away.

-Wayne

The End!

2006-06-12T11:50:00.000-04:00

We completed our Wildland Fire Training today and took our exam, all 36 of us that started out including the ten of us from Wolfskin VFD. I expect we'll all pass and then Oglethorpe County and its various districts will have acquired FFT2 graduates. That's what you get, and it's a deal because now your volunteer fire fighters are qualified to work alongside the Georgia Forestry Commission.

Here's the folks who graduated and got the great trinket below, the nicest cap I have: (I'd be glad to name some of these folks but there are some of our firefighters who are otherwise tigers prefer to be unnamed and that is perfectly understandable and so this is what you get - the great VFDs in the area:

Devil's Pond VFD

Wolfskin VFD

Beaverdam VFD

Glade VFD

Maxeys VFD (hi Tim!)

and

Winterville (Athens-Clarke County)

We were also very pleased that Glenn Reynolds and Sharon Dow from the Appalachian Trail Club joined us for the course.

Here's part of what we got. Forty hours of training, and this:

And that's not a complaint. We were delighted to receive these caps color-coordinated with our nice kevlar shirts and pants and I intend to wear mine (but not bill backwards, never fear).

Yesterday was especially gruelling and, in the end interesting. Grueling because it was all classroom work, and interesting because an hour before the end our own Wolfskin and Beaverdam got called out for a "controlled burn" that had gotten out of control. To our relief we got out early; to our chagrin, the instructors ended the day's session at the same time and everyone one else was waving cheerily to us as they took off for home.

The "controlled burn" was way down Wolfskin Road and then off onto a itty bitty dirt road that went for miles and then we discovered that the owner had decided he didn't need us and please go away. Oh well. When an owner says no and there's no clear danger, that's it. To be frank, it *appears* that the owner had not submitted a burn permit in the first place, thought his fire was getting out of control, called *after* the fact to submit a controlled burn permit and then, probably seconds later, called 911 for help. Well, this is how things work sometimes. Please just make sure that the above is not how you organize it.

The course was excellent - well organized over three 12-hour days plus four more hours today, with wonderful instructors, and if I started out knowing 10% of what we eventually covered, in the end I knew 95%. And we got to know some of our fellow firefighters around the county that we never see, because after all they are in different districts, and that's of considerable value too.

Yesterday on Saturday, to our surprise, we found we'd had a catered lunch delivered by Countryside Catering. (If you have a link to this I'll be glad to insert it - Jerry Warren and the other guys worked hard to put this together.) Wolfskin VFD Chief Phyllis Jackson and Treasurer Cary Fordyce had worked behind the scenes to pull together a number of sponsers to treat us all after two weekends' and 40 hours of hard work. It made us sleepy in the afternoon but that's ok.

So we particularly thank the caterers and our sponsers:

Countryside Catering sponsered by

Bill Cabaniss of Commercial Bank
Anita Turenne of Pinnacle Bank
Roger Tench of Georgia Power
and
Jeff Paul of Rayle Electric

We had a strong ovation for all these sponsers at the end of our training. And had an especially strong ovation for our great instructors from the GFC:

Tracy Graham, Chief Ranger in Crawford who along with Phyllis Jackson and Steve Gray, helped to make this happen.

Steve Gray who conducted most of the sessions, and believe me I've seen plenty of instructors but never someone quite so good at motivating his students.

Mark Millirons, who was great at peppering his lectures with an astonishing array of stories and accounts.

Denise Croker , who as Glenn said, comes with a competent and knowledgeable exterior, and a no-nonsense no-b.s. inside.

and

Mike Lee, who was my own Squad 4 Boss, and a very patient one indeed, and gave a great talk on hazardous materials.

You'll probably agree that we hope never to see you, but thanks to all the folks above, you can be grateful if it turns out that way.

And now, to end with, here's the Georgia Forestry Commission Forecast for today. 33% relative humidity, a burn index of 25, a KBDI of 510, which is not just high, but extremely high. With 15 mph winds and 93 degrees (I'm looking at 98 degrees right now) we are in a Class 5 day, the highest fire danger: Extremely High Fire Danger. Expect more of it if we don't get rain tomorrow, and take a look around your place. Do you think you could withstand a wildfire out of control with 50 foot flame length in 20 mph winds? If you're at the top of a ridge it will be as if your house is sitting in front of a blowtorch.

So *please* don't light fires without calling for a permit - there's nothing you have to burn today that couldn't be burned in better conditions next week, and the consequences are that you could destroy your own home and those of your neighbors! If you'd seen the videos we'd seen you'd be scared to death.

Sorry, folks, but that's what we've been learning. Please don't start any "controlled burns" without contacting the Georgia Forestry Commission, which you can do with a single simple phonecall to 706-638-5556. You might want to look take a squint at your neighbors if they are burning under these conditions and maybe give them a little call.

-Wayne

Wildland Firefighting Training

2006-06-05T06:03:00.000-04:00

This was the first of two weekends for this course hosted by Wolfskin VFD.

On Saturday the 40 of us from at least seven Oglethorpe County VFDs met for a more-than-full day of indoor classtime. The five instructors are Georgia Forestry Commission firefighters. There are eleven of us from Wolfskin, a great showing but we miss all the folks who weren't able to make it.

Saturday we got there at 8am, and at noon broke for a short lunch. Someone asked the instructor when the day would be over and he said “8pm”. HUH??? We had all been assuming we’d be out at 5pm and thought it was a joke. Well, it turned out it wasn’t a joke, and it won’t be a joke tomorrow or next Saturday either!

Saturday's sessions covered wildland fire characteristics and, of some interest the ICS, the Incident Command System. This is a kind of a unique system of dynamic organization in which strategy and tactics are communicated through a hierarchy from the Incident Commander to the lowest of the lows, the grunts on the ground (us).

The Incident Command System is being used universally (meaning all US States use the same system), apparently because it works so well. You can have volunteers sent in to a situation from Maine, Alaska, Florida, and Ohio, and they can all work together because they all speak this language. In developing situations, which need not be firefighting but could be hurricane relief, as in Katrina, or any other situation, as in giving a party, you often have a few individuals arriving first at the scene followed by many more over the next time periods. That is what this system is designed to accomodate. This is my understanding, at least.

So we are squad members, and there will be four squads. There are 40 firefighters from at least seven Oglethorpe County volunteer fire departments, and of course when we walked into class today each department sat together. So it was rather clever that one of the first things they did was to have us count off 1-4 to assign us to the four different squads of ten each. That mixes us together.

Sunday was another 12-hour day. We spent the first couple of hours in-class on safety zones (marked places you can retreat to through an escape route should a wildland fire suddenly change behavior) and entrapment (what happens if your escape route gets cut off and you can't get to the safety zone). And then we went outside and practiced on getting into our fire shelters. All wildland firefighters have to carry these things now. The bottom right photo in the above link shows what these things look like.

They're tightly packaged and are basically aluminum coated bodybags with a slit down the length. You shake them out, step into them, then get down on the ground with the shelter covering you. The aluminum reflects 95% of heat radiation and allows you to breathe cool air from the ground until the fire has passed over. You might emerge with third degree burns but in many cases emerge alive.

So we had to shake out the things and get into them and covered over properly in 25 seconds to pass this exercise. Glenn had a bit of trouble because of the MS, but his squad leader worked diligently and they found a way he could get into the thing without relying too much on the legs, and he passed the exercise too.

Then we had lunch and proceeded to the burn sites on Blacksnake Road that runs above Goulding Creek on the other side of the Sparkle. Here we were going to spend an hour as squads making a scratch line, a cleared 3-foot path surrounding the burn site, and then start fires. Here we are receiving instructions (and by the way, the the blue boxes you see hanging from the belts of everyone in the photo Glenn took are the fire shelters).

Note the pretty yellow shirts and green pants. Although many of the Oglethorpe County ffs are experienced in structure fires (for which you wear a completely different outfit) and have fought wildland fires, many had not been really trained or prepared for that. Everyone who took the course had to buy the clothing and a few other items, so that's why we all look the same.

Even though the temperature was 85 deg, direct sun, 24% humidity they were extremely comfortable. I'd like a wardrobe of them, frankly.

We all got our tools and keeping proper ten foot distance advanced in four lines of ten folks each in cleverly arranged formats to get the scratch line completed in short order.

Then we set the fires using the clever drip torch you see in the photo below.

Unfortunately this area was still too moist and did not burn well. After an hour or so of effort we had a discussion about how everything worked and did not work and then voted on trying a burn at a second site. The vote was 20:19 in favor (a lot of people really wanted to go home early), so the instructors proceeded up the hill and began spotting fires in a preplanned area. Then we were called up one squad at a time to put it out.

This fire burned MUCH more successfully, and our approach was to contain it by quickly clearing a fire line around it, concentrating particularly on zones where the fire was headed most rapidly. Things went very well indeed and within three hours we had the fire completely contained and let it burn itself out.

That practice burn and fire line creation was extremely grueling. Neither of us are going to have a treadmill cardiac exam for awhile. I have to say the five instructors, who double as squad leaders and Incident Commander, are fantastic. They're enthusiastic about what they're doing, extremely patient with us, make sure everyone is doing everything right, and clearly love what they're doing.

We finished up at 8pm, and as we were going over the second burn the folks from Beaverdam VFD got a dispatch for a fire in their area and off they went, running for their trucks.

And that's half the course - we'll complete the remainder next weekend.

Training Update - May 18

2006-05-18T23:32:00.000-04:00

Just to remind you - the Woodland Fire Training that WolfskinVFD will be hosting is 8 hours a day on the weekends of June 3-4 and Jun 10-11. The controlled burn will be either Sunday the 4th or Saturday the 10th, as I understand it (depending on which day the GA Forestry Commission decides is the best).

Our area is heavily forested, and we have periods of considerable drought in the summer and autumn, so this is an important training event for all firefighters who can make it.

For that training event, you will need to register and you will need your own equipment, including boots - contact us for more information.

So the first part of our training session was to be sized for bootware. Then a few of us had had recent CPR training but for the rest of us it had been awhile so we decamped to Mary's house where, as a professional, she had set up to do a CPR training session.

Mary did a great job. There were seven of us to be refreshed and recertified, and that's a pretty sizeable group to go through all the exercises individually. Mary handled it perfectly. I had had my training quite a few years ago and was no longer confident in the procedures, which have been considerably updated. That earlier training was fine, but Mary's was full of a lot of situational scenarios and clues and hints that the earlier training hadn't covered.

The poor mannikans had their chests pumped and their plastic lungs filled over and over, and by the end of it they were probably more tired than we were, and all they got for their trouble was a clorox wash. On the other hand - they didn't have to take the "short test". (Which we all passed!)

-Wayne

Training Session Thursday May18 7pm

2006-05-17T09:32:00.000-04:00

This is an important training session - please be there! I should also remind you of the woodland fire training on June 3-4 and June 10-11. We are not only hosting, but have to have the right equipment, and that will be measured at this training session. If you can't make it, be sure to get in touch with WVFD by Wed May 17 9pm.

The woodland fire training should be a lot of fun.

From our training officer Ed,

Hello everyone-
Training this Thursday will be an important mix of
items, depending on what you need. Primarily, it will
cover CPR recertification. Boot measurements (for the
wildland fire class) will also be taken as well as the
actual registration for those planning to attend the
class June 3-4 & 10-11. We are the host for this class
so let's have a good turnout! Back to the boots - if
you will be in the class, but can't make training on
Thursday, PLEASE call or email me by Wed., 5/17 at 9pm
with your boot size. We have to place the order on
Friday in order to get the boots by class time. For
those not needing CPR training, there will be truck &
station maintenance. Thanks.
Ed

-Wayne

Business Meeting May 4

2006-05-02T09:26:00.000-04:00

Two things:

First and foremost, we have a business meeting 7pm on Thursday May 4. Please do attend, and we always love to see our civilians there too, and thank you John Fuller - your presence and input is always valuable to us.

Second - Ed and I arranged to meet last night to practice on driving the truck, in this case the yellow Margarita one, the more difficult one to drive. Ed's good at this, and was great at helping me along. I have to tell you that I've no experience whatsoever at driving heavy, manual, lugging trucks and this was a great informal practice. We drove twice up to Corinth Church, practiced backing up and turning around and all that stuff. We did the battery and the air brakes and everything. If you think all the firefighters know just what to do and how to do it, all you have to do is look at me.

So if anyone is anxious about your lack of prowess as a fantastic firefighter, don't be. There's plenty of us who are willing to arrange special times for shy people (like me) who get intimidated and want to practice in a more informal environment. Just let any of us know, and emailing wolfskinvfd@yahoo.com is a good way to start.

Ed and I had a great conversation about photographing plants, as we were making our two round trips to Corinth Church and delaying all those nice people driving behind us. Ed asked if I could identify a wildflower if he brought it in, and I said, maybe, but we can sure find out. Turns out one of our new firefighters, Pat, is pretty darn good at plant identifications too. So if you thought firefighters were limited to fighting fires and trying to drive trucks, there's quite a bit of talent here you didn't know about!

See you at the Thursday meeting.

-Wayne

Training - April 20

2006-04-21T07:05:00.000-04:00

Last night was a great session. We started early, 6:30, since EDT gives us some extra daylight. The turnout was good, a dozen or so, although we missed some folks.

We had two of the trucks out working them over. We pulled the drop tank off the supertanker and filled and sucked and filled and sucked until everyone had a go at it and knows how to do it. The margarita truck is a little less automated - but everyone had a chance to do the PTO engagement to get the drive in gear so the pumper can be used for squirting water.

We took both trucks up to the head of Wolfskin Road and filled them, and it certainly is a trip to direct traffic with our little orange vests and all.

We had the trucks parked back in their bays when, what should happen, but a fire call - so everyone got in their gear and were off. Only to find that it was a controlled burn and so it was 10-22'd.

All in all, a very good training session and one that gets repeated frequently.

In less happy news, some lowlife stole a very significant amount of our building materials for the new firestation. We're asking people in the area to keep an eye out for aluminum siding and a 25-foot steel I-beam. The theft was quite an operation - it required some heavy equipment to remove the I-beam and cart it off. So if you spot these items, please DO NOT attempt to handle it yourself, but DO call the Oglethorpe County Sherrif's office. And let us know - wolfskinvfd@yahoo.com .

We want to recover these items. Replacing them is costly, for sure, but the re-engineering for new items is far more costly, so please keep your eyes peeled.

Business meeting on May 4, Thursday at 7pm. Be there!

-Wayne

Week of March 27

2006-03-29T05:29:00.000-05:00

FC Phyllis Jackson has three announcements:

First, there is an Optional training on trucks this Thursday March 30 if
weather okay. May start 6:30 pm; come when can get
there. There will be plenty of action to keep FF
busy. T.O. Ed will follow with details.

Second, don't forget the usual Business meeting is next week, April 6.

Finally, and this will be fun: Wildland FF class is on track for **first 2 week-ends
in June.** Save those dates --we won't get another
opportunity like this, maybe not ever again. (On a
$2,200 GFC Grant, and no cost to us)

WVFD Blog Words

2006-03-14T07:56:00.000-05:00

There's an interesting site that scans your blog and gives you a picture of the words most often used. The size of the word is how often it's used. It gives a good impression, filtered anyway through Glenn and me who write most often, of the website.

The above site's intent is to sell you a t-shirt custom made with the words on it. That's not my intent of course. I just thought it was interesting:

-Wayne

WVFD 1-3-5 Year Plan

2006-03-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

I've added the current understanding of our plan for one and three and five year goals to the sidebar. You can also get to it by going directly here.

The plan, constructed last year at this time, was FC Phyllis's brainchild; Ed Frey chaired the committee and Lisa Vaughan, Phyllis, Mary Nouri, and myself worked on it.

We're pleased to report that we've achieved nearly all our goals for Year One, and with the help of our Wolfskin neighbors and friends, a very major part of Year Three - see the post below for the good news.

WVFD has only come short in one way: we need more volunteers! Let me rephrase that:

We need more volunteers!

There are a lot of jobs, some of them exciting and some of them only very important! There's no one who doesn't have talents that can't fit into a congenial and friendly VFD where everyone works together well, so PLEASE do get in touch or come to one of our meetings if you have the time, and honestly it doesn't take that much time!

Our business meeting is the first Thursday of the month, and our training sessions, always fun, are the third Thursday of the month (except possibly March - we just had a training session - have to check with Phyllis!).

The Supertanker Arrives!

2006-03-09T23:22:00.000-05:00

This one is going to be heavy on the pics, but I've sized things down to a fairly manageable download even if you're on dialup. And since I always specify my height and width attributes, you can read my wise prose while things are downloading! How about that!

First, the big event is the arrival of the Watermaster described by Fire Chief Phyllis Jackson in detail in the post below. We've been waiting for it for four months (at least), so we were as excited as the kids who showed up with their folks to see it. The tanker is somewhere in the neighborhood of $170,000, 95% paid for by DHS and 5% that we had to raise ourselves as matching funds. The Wolfskin Community responded very generously and we passed the $8500 mark at the end of January.

This was an impromptu training session, but curious folks did stop by. We'll be having a formal presentation to the community soon.

Let me introduce you to Phyllis. A lot of people worked hard on the grant, matching fundraising, and facilities to house the supertanker. Without Cary Fordyce none of us would have been able to negotiate the bewildering paths of the IRS and other entities. Lisa and Ed put in endless time with phone calls and footwork. Glenn took on the task of fundraising letters and thank yous. Frankie kept us in business, as always. But Phyllis had the original inspiration last March and provided much of the impetus, enthusiasm, and most of the grant writing ("We can DO this!"). And today she's a happy camper.

I arrived at Phyllis's (three miles away by road, but a half-mile if I tromp through the woods) at 3pm; the tanker had just arrived.

Here's the "wolf" skull (actually not) that Phyllis wired up with red LEDs.

The tanker is a beast. 2500 gallons. Automatic transmission :-)

Now I know you're curious about the house you see in the background of one of the above pics. That's Phyllis' and Jeff's. Jeff is a wildlife biologist. They built the house gradually over several years and have added their own unique touches.

It was probably 12 years ago that we had a training session using ladders on their upstairs balcony.

Isn't that an interesting ornamentation embroidering the trim? Let's look a little more closely.

And then there's Frankie, on the left. Now Frankie is a sine qua non. Without whom nothing. He fixes things. He fixes everything. Right now he's trying to figure out how to fix something.

And then it was time to drive the tanker to WVFD to get ready for the fete. I could hardly keep up. The road, by the way, is Blacksnake Road.

And here it is, 6pm already. I missed most of the fun part where it was discovered that the tanker, at 119" high, didn't quite fit under several items on the 121" high ceiling.

No problem for Frankie. He pulled off the stack, cut a few inches off, and put it back on. Presto!

The brains of the system.

By this time, folks were arriving and it was time for company owner Richard O'Neill (in the yellow jacket) to show us how things are done. We're getting out the drop tank here. It's a big plastic tank that opens out. The idea is you drop your water from the tanker into it for other trucks to use, and then you take off to get more. (Or stay - the tanker is fully equipped as a regular pumper.) We must have filled it and sucked it back into the tanker a couple of dozen times during the course of the evening.

The hose is big because this tanker sucks water fast. It attaches to that neat metal strainer. The design is very clever. There's a seal air chamber so it can't turn upside down or sink, and it allows 2500 gallons to be pulled out of any body of water at least three inches deep, and in 2 minutes.

Around here you can't rely on fire hydrants. You make an onsite pond instead.

The drop tank is filled from the side of the truck. It can be filled slow, or really fast. The kids liked this a lot.

While this isn't necessarily normal procedure, we used the sucker to pull the water back into the truck, so it could be used again. Less than a minute to pull it all back in.

Everyone needed a lesson, so this went on well into the evening.

Today's the Big Day!!!

2006-03-09T11:34:00.000-05:00

From WVFD Fire Chief Phyllis (and if you don't have time during the day, join us tonight at 6pm or after at WVFD on Wolfskin Road to celebrate the arrival of the supertanker.

FF and Friends,


Yee-Haw!!!!   The WaterMaster super vacuum
pumper/tanker arrives in Wolfskin—after lunch today.
Richard O’Neal, one of the 3 owners of Southern Fire
Equipment is bringing it from Laurel MS, with a stop
in White Plains AL.  “The Liquidator” (Wayne came up
with that ) will be parked at my house this
afternoon—drop in!  I took a vacation day.

**Spectating, Truck Training, 6 PM.**  Lee Shearer
from the Athens Banner-Herald is coming to do a story
for Friday paper. Family members and Wolfskin
neighbors, y’all come check out the new razzle-dazzle
mobile water supply unit.  Let’s get some civilians in
the newspaper photo,  and maybe some gung-ho kids.

FYI: Check our www.southern-fire.com for info on the
truck and the company owners—all 3 are volunteer
firefighters, and developed the first truck and
low-level water strainer (fills from just 2 inches of
water source) for their own rural department. The idea
came from—not real exotic here— “Hey, lets modify and
outfit a septic tank sucking truck.” 

Also, type “watermaster truck” in Google.

In the FEMA Grant application, I wrote that this
vacuum tanker is perfect for our rural fire department
needs:  “Sucks, safe, simple; swift, solo, and
shallow.”

Here are some specs:  

2500 gal tank on Freightliner chassis (International
would have been my first choice, but the demo was a
Freightliner—and okay, it’s similar.)

Maximum water with minimum personne needed. Wittig 430
CFM vacuum system; fills tank in 2 ½ minutes from
static water (dry hydrant).  That thing sucks!!!
(Guaranteed to out perform conventional tankers 2 :1
in a  two hour water shuttle.  Video cameras so you
can sit in the cab, operate the “command center,” and
watch your back.

Will draft around 35 feet, vertical!  (I got 90 ft of
suction hose, w/ rapid Storz connections—should get us
to about any stream from parked a road in outlying
areas. 10 ft vertical draft is about what our
conventional trucks do easily.) 

1000 GPM Hale fire pump (Had that added, to make it
also a Pumper for firefighting. We need 2 Class A
Pumpers for ISO Class  8 rating)

No-rust aluminum tank.  Tank can be chloroxed and used
to haul potable water in event of disaster.  (Of
course storing the amount of chlorox needed for that
would make us a haz-mat site.)

2500 gal portable drop tank, stored on fold- down
carrier on side.

Wolf skull with red blinking lights in eye-sockets—Our
mascot for the dash!!! (Well okay, that was not
standard equipment, and it’s actually a big coyote
roadkill, but hey, it works in Wolfskin.)

See y’all tonight!  Peace in Wolfskin,

Phyllis

Supertanker arrives Thursday March 9!

2006-03-03T01:59:00.000-05:00

Everyone in the Community can greet the new Watermaster Pumper/Tanker Supertanker that will arrive at the Wolfskin VFD the afternoon of Thursday, March 9! You have donated money, time, or at least best wishes towards this event and you deserve a reward. I don't know what all might be planned, and it will probably not be the formal commissioning party, but come see the monster tanker and enjoy whatever might happen during the evening.

Entertainment will be provided by the firefighters! Training for firefighters will start at 6:00 pm sharp, lead by the President of Southern Fire Equipment, who we are told is driving the tanker from Mississippi where it was fitted with a monster pump. See the new turnout gear, the new SCBA, the kitchen that was turned into a truck bay, and the site of the new fire station in waiting!

-Glenn

WVFD Business meeting Tonight!

2006-03-02T15:14:00.000-05:00

The minutes of the previous meeting, Feb 2, have been posted. On the agenda for tonight:

Agenda, WVFD Business Meeting 03-02-2006; 7 pm

Officer Reports:
Minutes of January meeting - Lisa
Treasurer’s Report – Cary (PJ)
Chief’s Report- PJ– Announcements,Appointments & Misc.
County FF Assn Meeting 2-21-06. Lisa or Jim K to
attend 3-21-06?
Fire calls since last meeting
I. C.- Report incidents 100% - file in notebook & to
wolfskinvfd@yahoo.com
P.R. Article in Echo
Work Party report; further work
Assistant Chief’s Report-Jim
*******************************************************
Top Priority Business/Reports first

2004 FEMA Grant : Amendment for wildland suits;
Grant close-out –Cary (PJ)
Wildland fire tools; A-V equip; Misc equip.;Thermal
Imager- John W, PJ. Inventory and Issue Records –
John (PJ)
2005 FEMA Grant – Tanker delivery & training Thursday
March 9. Yee-Haw!!!
Rural Development Grant application update
Capital Fund Drive –Door-to-Door Phase. ** Need
Co-ordinator**
Building and Grounds – Need Chairperson
Steer raffle tickets-Lisa

*******************************************************
Officer and Special Committee Reports, continued:

Training Report- Ed
In-house - What a night!
GFA classes upcoming; FF Weekend March 24-26
Wildland Firefighter Class – June 3-4 and 10-11
FF recruits for March 2006 class GFA
Apparatus Report – Frankie
Equipment Report– Dave
Information Officer - Glenn- NIFRS , Incident Report
revision, Capital Fund Drive
(Operating Fundraising – Acknowledgement letters to
donors?)
Webmaster – Wayne
(Standing Committee for 1-Yr, 3-Yr, 5-Yr WVFD Plans–
Ed)

Old Business: Accountability; Security system; New
keys; SCBA storage; New equipment marked, SCBA
engraved

New Business:

Next Business/Board Meeting: 7:00 pm on Thursday, March 2, 2006

2006-02-22T22:07:00.000-05:00

The title says it all. See you there! Hope to have the minutes of the February meeting posted at least a few days before the meeting.

- Glenn

Community and Frankie to the Rescue of Margaritaville!

2006-02-22T20:32:00.000-05:00

As detailed below in an email by Fire Chief Phyllis Jackson, the training session last Thursday, 16 February, came to an abrupt halt for those Firefighters who stayed late to drive Engine No. 1 to top it off from the nearest hydrant, which just happens to belong to Athens-Clarke. I assumed the goal was Double Bridges Road, but her post suggests Belmont Road, perhaps just to test out an alternative hydrant. The truck died.

The engine still has 'North Oconee County' written on its lime-green doors (one reason Oconee gets credit in the Oglethorpe Echo for coming to fires; it is really Wolfskin in disguise!). Some of us call it 'Margaritaville' but I understand it is a sincere gift or loan or one-dollar lease of a good piece of equipment from Oconee County in appreciation for helping them cover the tricorner area around Belmont and Kennedy Roads. Anyway, it has been fairly reliable under the routine attention of Frankie. Her email follows:

FF and Friends:

Last night made me feel thankful, once again, for good neighbors, and appreciate just how much our fire department depends on the different talents and contributions of its members. Amongst them, it's Frankie -- Inventor and Mechanic Extraordinaire -- who keeps us going, wards off what would otherwise be a crisis, contributes considerably to my peace of mind.
**********************************************

Frankie to the Rescue:

Training Meeting last night was going routinely, no drama…right up until the end. I’d had a hectic week of winding up the 2004 FEMA Grant (and oh yes, that detail of the day job), thinking, “In half an hour I’ll be headed home to my supper and then collapse in a warm bed. But NO! Minutes later, the Number One Truck — our pride and joy (okay, even if it IS lime green, it’s a Class A Pumper) — is disabled and lifeless, stranded along side the Wolfskin Road.

Driver John W. and Mike G. in the truck heard a loud noise coming up the hill (approaching the crossing with Belmont) and pulled over. Sounded like some big item fell off the truck. Hmmm…what had we left sit on the tailboard? Moments later antifreeze spewed forth and John was quick to see the engine temp gauge spike.

Those of us who know less about these mechanical events assumed the truck had blown a radiator hose. Once again, a LESSON: It’s not what you don’t know that does you in, it’s what you * think* you know, that you don’t know…

Oconee County firefighter Shane Halloran came along in his big truck with lots of lights, offering help, and to carry some folks back to the station. Moral support is so very welcome, when you’re stranded.

The engine cooled down. Frankie lifted the hood and announced the real problem, far more serious than a blown hose: “You people have stripped all the belts off my truck!” One belt in shreds, a couple others off but present, one missing altogether — no fan, no power steering, no air pressure and no air brakes (thus the truck will not move), no power brakes…you get the idea. Bob Dylan song lyrics ran through my head: “You ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Not tonight.

I mentally inventoried the value of tools and equipment on this truck. Got to get it back to the station or at least parked in somebody’s yard tonight. We could call Gabriel’s wrecker for a tow. Frankie gave me a dead silent stare. How could I unleash such an insult! “MY TRUCK is going home …tonight! Have I ever not done right by MY TRUCK?”

With the bright work lights and tool kit from his truck, a flashlight, and a mechanically inventive mind, Frankie took inventory of parts and possibilities, measured distances, tried a succession of belt arrangements. He was determined to jerry rig enough belts to get the air pressure back up and cool the engine. Just the basics. Power brakes would be a plus, given the full load of water. He would take it home, with the power steering out. Not me! I have driven fireknockers with a full load (980 gal x 8 lb/gal ) that never had power steering in the first place. It’s a white knuckle trip. But a beast like this which is intended to have power steering and then loses it — that’s hugely another matter.

Frankie and Ed loosened nuts on bolts and banged on things. I worried about some small but key part falling to oblivion the tall grass beneath the engine. Yes, I would secretly watch for falling parts. The big water pumped loosened. Frankie directed Ed to hop in the cab and use the starter to keep turning the engine as Frankie worked a belt onto the pulley each time the pulley moved. I had the phone book out of my truck, secretly calling on the cell some folks along the route where we might park it ... you know, just in case. But how could I have doubted Frankie? The King of Invention and Rigging on the Fly did indeed take HIS TRUCK home. And this morning he is down at the station getting HIS TRUCK repaired and back in service. Hats off and a high five to you Frankie.

Peace in Wolfskin,

Phyllis

In one response, Ed Frey writes:

Amen. Frankie is "THE MAN!"

And as Phyllis writes, it was a community response that made it all possible. So tempting to Figherfighters and passers-by to just leave it until the morning. But what followed was at least a 2.5 hr rescue, judging from radio traffic at about 11:30 PM when I overheard Phyllis tell Oglethorpe 911 that Engine No. 1 was out of service.

A pain in the butt for everyone unlucky to be involved. But better it happened at 9 PM after training than on the way to a house fire. That is one of the reasons we do many things over and over at successive training meetings, to try to discover beforehand what is not going to work on the next fire call.

Cleanup Party

2006-02-10T07:34:00.002-05:00

WVFD normally meets two Thursdays a month, one for training and one for business. Last night was an off-Thursday, but the supertanker is coming "sometime" this month and the firehouse had to be cleaned up to make room for it.

Above, Fire Chief Phyllis and Ed are checking the new doors Frankie put on after busting out the end wall of the kitchen/former meeting room. As you can see, it's pretty much filled with junk, some dating back 20 years or more. All of that had to be excavated and sorted into throwout or keep - Glenn, with his excellent organizational skills and lack of sentimentality, had that job.

Why bust out the kitchen? One of the firetrucks, presumably with ample amounts of lubricant, has to fit there, because the supertanker gets the big bay in the middle to the right of the kitchen in this photo.

A fine time was had by all dozen of us that showed up at 6:30. Steve, Lisa, Ed, Phyllis, Glenn, Brenda, Jim and I had already gotten well-started building shelves when the pizza arrived, carried in by Dave and Louis. Mary provided an excellent supper. Cary and Jeff were there, and later our newest firefighter Pat showed us the easiest way to move a heavy range and refrigerator - hint, it involves two brooms. Phyllis put on selected fire music and we spent some time eating and organizing and then went back to work.

Ultimately we threw out tons of stuff, got the kitchen completely cleaned out, boxed up and shelved old turnout gear, and did it all by 9:30.

Ob-cat: we're still pushing to have the supertanker named "The Genie-Weenie Supertanker".

Water Water Water Maps

2006-02-05T07:37:00.000-05:00

WVFD is always looking for water sources; if you have one on your property and are willing to allow us to use it on occasion or in emergencies PLEASE let us know!

I have constructed, using this website for the original DOT PDF images. I am mostly interested in watersheds, so I colorized the map for clarity. The DOT maps are not recent, so there are places where roads are incomplete or non-existent (Timberland Trail isn't there, for instance, and Faust Farm Road is incomplete). If you see a mistake or incompleteness, feel free to let me know; better yet, sketch it in and email your correction to Wayne.

Here's a very small version of the much larger map, including the Wolfskin District in southwest Oglethorpe County:

Feel free to right-click and save it for yourself as a printable image.

There's a larger version (460 kb) of about the same area that you can download here.

And if you want the whole of Oglethorpe County (1.8 MB!) you can download that here. This version is sizeable and it was my thought to be able to print it out poster size. So far I haven't found a cheap and convenient way to do that. But it would look nice on a wall, wouldn't it?

-Wayne

Monthly Business Meeting and Dry Weather Coming

2006-02-03T08:15:00.000-05:00

Last night was our monthly business meeting; a somewhat disappointing turnout but we accomplished a lot and were pleased to see John Fuller, one of our trustees present.

In the next few days I'll put up our 1-3-5-year plan for fans of WVFD to look at. This was Fire Chief Phyllis Jackson's idea, and Ed Frey's implementation, and we were very pleased to see that we've already accomplished all but two goals for the first year and have already accomplished one of the three-year goals.

We hadn't expected to get the supertanker until 2007. The combined efforts of Phyllis, Cary, Glenn and several others to land the supertanker grant, and the overwhelming generous response from our friends and neighbors in the Wolfskin Community accomplished this. Congratulations to everyone!

A La Nina event has been declared by NOAA in the Pacific. La Nina is predicted to last 3-6 months, but remember the two-year drought here of the late 1990-2000s was brought by an unexpected series of La Ninas lasting for much longer than expected.

This is part of the El Nino-La Nina cycle. In the Southeast US a La Nina means drier weather as we move into the warmer months. VFDs are going to have to be more diligent, and residents are going to have to be much more careful about fire; lack of rain as the temperatures increase may lead to some dry conditions around here.

We'll keep you updated, and be sure to watch the Georgia Fire Danger link on the right sidebar!

-Wayne

UPDATE: Phyllis emails me that

...RE: Tanker in 3-yr plan. Had we NOT gotten the grant,
this tanker we would have afforded in the plan would
not be a super vacuum tanker. Not even close. (More
like an old milk truck.) These vacuum tankers are so
new, most F.D.s have never seen one operate. We have
a number of skeptics waiting to see it. Tony assures
me not to worry one bit--they will be blown away. (Or
sucked away.)

.
We certainly want to hold a "truckwarming event", when the tanker arrives sometime this month!

Minutes of Monthly Board Meetings

2006-02-01T01:36:00.000-05:00

As information items to the Community, on the right Sidebar there is a new catagory called 'Minutes of Board Meetings' with links to the minutes of the monthly Board/Business meetings of the Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department. These are submitted by Firefighter and Secretary Lisa Vaughan and will be approved or approved with modifications during the next Board meeting. If they are modified, those will be incorporated into the minutes linked here. Some editing may be done for a consistent format from month to month, but will not be done to be politic. What Lisa emails the Board as the minutes, pending approval, gets posted here.

The intent is to let our commnity members know what happens at these meetings and thereby encourage input from the community. Let us know if you find these helpful.

- Glenn

One More

2006-01-09T18:18:00.000-05:00

I'm told that I'm not allowed to solely post my pics of others, so here's one of me taken by Cary Fordyce. :-) Look at them stripes!

-Wayne

12 Days

2006-01-09T06:58:00.000-05:00

That's what we have to wear our new turnout gear and crawl through the dirt and stuff so we don't look TOO pink for the Jan 21 Structure Fire Course!

Christmas at Wolfskin

2006-01-08T18:07:00.000-05:00

Today was a special day at WVFD - our PPE arrived. For the last 300 years we've been wearing hand-me-downs NOT THAT WE'RE COMPLAINING, but we do look weird, and other firefighters are nice about it but don't want to get too close!

So you can imagine how excited we were at this particular fashion event. We spent a couple of happy hours inventorying and trying on all the turnout gear. Not pictured here are Cary and your photographer behind the camera, me. Although I did get dressed out!

Before all the fun started, here's (back to front) Jim Kitchens, Jon Huff, John Wampler and FC Phyllis Jackson making sure everything is there.

From front to back Ed, Phyllis, and Jon Huff in their new duds. The glowing stripes really confused the camera!

And finally last but definitely not least, our Firefighter of the Year, Ed Frey. That's his answer to my question "Ed! Are you wearing any suspenders?"

-Wayne