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This Happened To Me
Fighting A Fire On Your Stomach
For those of you who may not know, I was an SPO (Special Police Officer for those who aren’t up on useless acronyms) at a pediatric hospital. Part of the many duties we had was responding to fires in the hospital or on its grounds. The electrical panel was a sight to behold. Mounted on a wall in the primary office of Engineering, it was massive. There was an indicator light for each and every fire alarm placed on a metal outline of the entire building. That way when an alarm went off, we knew exactly where the potential problem was located.
Naturally, it had to be on my shift when an alarm went off. And went off. And went off. And…
We were always on paired off, so we always had backup. Which turned out to be a very good thing on more than one occasion. This being one of them. My partner, we’ll call him Nelson as we also always went by last names only, and I took off to the quadrant where the alarm was sounding. Mind you, we’re in full uniform and have a full fire extinguisher. There’s no time to lose. Kids can’t be evacuated as easily as most adults, so time is precious.
We search and we search. Nothing is hot to the touch. No smoke. Nothing. We radio back to Engineering. The alarm is still sounding. Somewhere there’s a fire and we can’t find it. We finally pinpoint the…
