FVFD responded to a single vehicle crash on Main Street around 4am this morning. Lori and I were planning to get up early anyways to leave for San Jose, but this was earlier than I had wanted to get up. …
FVFD got called out to this fire out by the river bar. Not only was it an illegal day to burn, it was stuff that shouldn’t have been burning any day. Including one dead cow.
After a relatively quiet last few months, the FVFD has been busy lately. We responded to our second structure fire in a couple of weeks. That is if you can call an abadoned house trailer a structure. As with most …
Around 12:30 am my pager went off for a structure fire on 5th Street. Those two words, “structure fire”, will wake you up and get the adrenaline flowing pretty quickly. When I arrived the middle section of the house was …
We didn’t get back to Loleta until around 1am and by 6am my back was hurting so I got up to watch one of the weirdest sunrises I’ve seen. With all the smoke drifting in from the fires, the sun …
I got a call today that Loleta Fire Dept was getting a mutual aid call and needed a third person. So along with Dave and Bob from Loleta, we headed over to the CalFire station in Fortuna. A lot of …
A fact of life of living in Ferndale is that on a weekly basis you will either be buying or selling raffle tickets. I’ve often thought it would save us all a lot of time and effort if we all …
I was just getting warmed up from my ride yesterday when the fire alarm went off for a hay fire in a barn. Naturally one thinks of spontaneous combustion when it comes to hay fires, but this one had some …
It’s not supposed to work like this, but I can relate because last year it happened to me. The guy at the valve is supposed to wait for a signal from the nozzle guy that he is ready for water. …
We were expecting it to be cold, wet and windy this morning when we put the lights up, but fortunately we only got one of the three, the wind. It was actually so windy that I woke up about 4:30 …
he FVFD received its new water tender a couple of days ago, and today I took it our to learn how it works. Since high school, I’ve always wanted to get a ride in a big rig, preferably a Peterbilt. …
In preparation for hanging the lights on the tree, we did our annual testing tonight. Probably 150-200 broken or burned out bulbs were replaced. It’s amazing that a higher percentage don’t have to be replaced given the abuse they go …
The day started out cold and wet, with even a short hailstorm, but the practice burn went down as scheduled. My plan for the day was to run the engine most of the day, and take one trip into the …
In preparation for our practice burn this weekend, we unloaded a semi-trailer of pallets into the house. Like an old Victorian needs help burning. Actually, the pallets are used to give us something more to work on before the house …
Tender 6 started life as a milk truck, picking up raw milk at the dairies and taking it to be processed. After it had served many years and miles in that duty, it was modified to become a fire tender. …
Also on the 19th, the FVFD had a fire drill, using a barn out at Chief Leonardo’s place that fell during a storm last winter. The pile of wood was much larger than expected and after burning for several hours …
You’ll never see this in a Jeep commercial. This single vehicle accident happened on Centerville Road. The Jeep came to rest in a water filled ditch, with the barb wire fence restricting access on the driver side, and the ditch …
Today FVFD had their annual Fireman’s Games, and since I was recently promoted to Captain of Company 1, that meant another dunking. I’ll never get used to how cold that water is. It really didn’t help that today was one …
Tonight we had a special fire drill, in conjunction with the Fortuna and Loleta fire departments. Since it was a mutual aid scenario we ended up doing it on a Wednesday night instead of our usual Thursday night. Towns people …
A current thought in automotive safety is that vehicles are getting so safe that drivers feel too comfortable doing things in their vehicles other than driving. Case in point is this accident. I can’t say what was going on in …
Walking down the street to the post office this morning Engine 2 went by. Looks like Company 2 has a new recruit. I guess Santa’s getting tired of all that cold and wanted a job with action on more than …
My pager went off this morning at 5:30am, and the first report of fire sounded like it was going to be the typical river bar fire that always seems to disturb my weekend sleeping. Since it had been raining I …
We don’t get very many traffic accidents in Ferndale. First the town is only 1 square mile so we don’t have many roads. Second we don’t have any signals, and most of the roads are only 25mph, so chances for …
Our fire drill this month was a country fire, where we made use of the country hydrants and water tenders to provide water to the fire. Jerry Lema provided the huge bonfire. Nobody remembered to bring the marshmallows though.
FVFD responded to a mutual aid call in Loleta for a trailer load of hay that caught fire. The trailer suffered a flat tire near Fernbridge, and what the owners didn’t realize was that the flat tire got hot enough, …
Every year we have to get the pumps in the fire engines tested, and for that we take them down to Scotia at the Pacific Lumber pond where they can draft from and then pump back into. The test involves …
Fourth of July was our usual routine. Start the day giving rides on the fire trucks for the kids of Ferndale. Then the 4th of July parade, followed by the fire department picnic. Once again this year the picnic was …
Last night we had a medical drill with the Fire Department. The topic was extrication, but this drill was focused on the medical aspects of auto extrication rather than actual extrication procedures. That meant that we didn’t get to cut …
Ferndale Fire Department responded to a multi-bike crash on the Wildcat today. 6 riders crashed after the lead bike went down in a blind corner. Several riders ended up getting airlifted out, and the rest went in ambulances. Not a …
One chore that our fire company really looks forward to is the annual hose test. This means taking every piece of hose off of the fire engine, testing it and then re-racking it. This year we got some new hose …
