So What CAN You Do?

Firefighters are action oriented and have strong tendency to try to fix or improve the situation, no matter what. So you can imagine the growing frustration in the following story, related to me by the crew of Truck One.

It started out as a routine car fire in a parking lot downtown. Usually this is a single engine response, but since Engine One was on another call, the truck was dispatched. This truck in particular did have a small pump, a booster line (hard rubber hose), and about 200 gallons of water. This would normally allowed the firefighter to rapidly "fix" the situation and get back to the station. But not today...

The car was a VW bug very much on fire, and all was going well as the truck arrived and attempted to put some water on the fire. Immediately, the rubber hose blew apart due to some recent and obviously incomplete repairs. Then...the battery of the car shorted out through the starter and with the car in gear, the car started moving. The firefighters grabbed and used every fire extinguisher to no avail. The took an axe and flattened all the tires. The valiant VW still sputtered along. Eventually, with three (count 'em three) more cars now on fire, backup arrived to relieve the crew who were now wishing for hole in which to hide.

To the crews defense, VW bugs are known to have magnesium which will burn at a very high temperature and is not readily extinguished with water or pretty much anything for that matter.