It was a Dark and Cold Night...

Last night we were dispatched to "man down" which is catch-all for anything weird related to people that are not moving or behaving in a proper manner. Usually, this is an intoxicated person that somehow failed to get out of sight before taking a nap. In this particular case, we were not exactly sure what to expect since the temperature was well below freezing and the average self-medicated drunk usually avoids napping on a sidewalk in that kind of weather. So, at about 10 PM we rolled out on the call to find a construction worker sitting in his pickup with the engine running. Since this was on a pan handle lot (driveway past one house near the street accessing a rear lot), we pulled into the drive and parked, proceeding on foot back to where the pickup truck was located. We found a DRT which in Paramedic terms means "dead right there". Apparently, he had finished work about 4-5 hours prior, went to the truck, and then had a heart attack or something of that nature. So after hours of sitting in the truck with the engine running, neighbors noticed the unusual behavior and initiated that ambiguous "man down" call.

As the neighbors gathered, along with the police doing their investigation, we took our cue from the freezing wind and tried to leave. At the point we opened the door to the fire engine, everything went dead. I mean, no lights, no engine, no starting, no nothing. So at this uncomfortable scene, we find ourselves stranded with the embarrassment of a dead engine.

To make a long story short, we spent the next two hours waiting in the cold for a tow truck to move our fire engine, and switching all of our gear to a reserve engine.