FROM A FIREMAN TO A TYREMAN ?
This is a short story about the day that changed my life. My name is Eric Roberts and I was employed as a fire fighter at Huddersfield Fire Station in West Yorkshire in the UK, The story started six months earlier, this was the time that I spent at the fire fighting training school. The training was very difficult , I did not mind the physical challenge, but the amount that I had to learn was mind blowing .
I spent night after night studying to get me through to the next exam, to be truthful I did not think that I would complete the course. My age had put me at a disadvantage I was 28 at the time, most of the other trainees were in their early twenties, however this did not put me off , the one thing that gave an advantage over the other recruits was that I could drive the fire engines, I had a heavy goods driving licence from my previous employment and that gave me an advantage over the younger members of my squad.
As the course came to an end I became more confident, my weight dropped to eleven stone and I became as fit and healthy as the time that I played football twice a week. My learning skills also improved all that I learned began sinking into place. Because I could drive the appliances I would always get the job of driving during our practice drills, especially when we went out to auto scrap yards to practice cutting people from cars that might be involved in accidents.
The job was now beginning to give me a buzz, I found that other skills that I learned in my earlier employment were coming to light, my management skills were helping me to become a leader, my mechanical skills from been a mechanic were helping me to understand the mechanical components that were involved in learning about water pumps and water pressures . Yes the whole experience was begging to become a good time and I really enjoyed the whole thing. I also made some good friends, a good friend who will be mentioned later in my story was called Mark, Mark was to join me after the course at Huddersfield Fire Station.
The weeks flew by and finally it time to take our exams, we were all very nervous but in the end we all seemed to do alright. After all we all had a lot of money invested in us and the ones that did not make it dropped out earlier in the course. I managed to pass the final exam and the final interview and proudly drove the first in line fire engine on the passing out parade. After a short break I was seconded to my posting at Huddersfield with my friend Mark, the rest of the rookies were spread out amongst all the other fire stations in West and South Yorkshire . My new life as a rooky fire fighter started on a Tuesday in April 1976. I was appointed to blue watch, in those days we had three watches, days, nights and three days off .
The three days off were great and most fire fighters took up a second job, like odd job men or window cleaners .As the weeks went by I settled down to life working as a fire fighter in a fire station, but the days were very long , we spent most of our time cleaning the hoses and fire engines even if they were not dirty, the station was spotlessly clean you could eat your dinner off the floor. Then one day we were called into the main mess room, for a meeting hosted by our local trade union representative , a guy called Bob. Bob was staunch Union man, we all had to be members of the Fire service Union, all this was new to me, as the other part of my working life was spent in the private sector. This was another part of the I was not sure about, but if the Union were needed to curb the employers so well be it. Back at the meeting Bob went on about working conditions and other things that went over my head, but the final gist of the meeting meant that we were going to go on strike. I could not believe it, few months into the job and I would be going on strike, this was all alien to my way of life
Strike came in a couple of weeks. This meant that we only attended emergency call outs the rest of the time was spent doing nothing , I could not believe it , was always brought up as a hard worker in private companies that had never heard of the word strike. We were going to work to do nothing, I feared that all my training would in vain and we would end up putting weight back on through lack of exercise. To my shock I realised that some of the older men were actually been on strike, the station officer who was from another Union was pulling his hair out because his men would not do the things he asked them to do and you feel a sense of friction and bad feelings building up.
I felt right out of it, Mark and I were in the middle of all this, we could not tell the station officer that we could not do the jobs he gave us but the older more experienced fire fighters were then telling us not to do the jobs because we were on strike. At this stage I was beginning to wish that I had my old job back, all this aggravation had never been a part of my life. All my previous jobs had always given me happy times, the main reason for me joining the fire service was job security.
At that time we were in one of our now common world recessions and the private sector were shedding jobs, the fire service was employing new recruits to form there new shift system brought on because of fewer working hours that was instigated by my friends the union, hence my now regretful choice of becoming a fire fighter. Days dragged on, the only highlights were call outs to a few good fires, the rest of the time was spent playing snooker or would you believe it sun bathing. Yes "sun bathing ", the summer of 1976 was very hot and all we had to do was to clean the fire hoses if they had been used at a fire, after that because we were on strike we did nothing yes nothing I was bored to tears. However something was about to change, something that would change my life.
The day started as another beautiful sunny day. We the blue watch were just finishing the last roster on nights. All the station were still on work to rule because of the dreaded union .mark and I were waiting to go home at the end of the shift, the time was about five to nine. At the end of a shift the old watch had to fall out sort of military style and the new watch would have to fall in. Little did I know but this was to be my last shift, indeed it was to be my last day as a working fire fighter. Mark and I were still waiting to be lined up to fall out, we were having a bit of a banter with a couple of men from red watch who were waiting to fall in at the start of their new day shift.
One was a Huddersfield town supporter and the other a Leeds united supporter, this always caused friction between the two sets of fans, but the banter continued. The last three nights of the night shifts had been very boring as usual , we had a few small incidents in the early evenings, a chip pan fire and a few grass fires caused by kids from a local council house estate, otherwise we watched television or played cards or snooker. By this time I was really disillusioned with my life as a fire man and looking forward to my weekend. Sub officer Peter was about to fall us out when shock and horror the fire bells went.
This sometimes happened at the change of a shift and the normal procedure was that fire men from either shift could mount that fire engines to make up the crews. I looked at Mark and in a split second the sirens were on and the doors of the fire station were open, we both made onto the pump, fire engines are called pumps because they pump water, simple. Before we knew it we were on our way to the fire, the call was to a house fire in an estate about four miles away, the other crew on board were all from our watch including our station officer Jim. We headed out towards the we were two pumps heading towards the fire as quickly as possible, although we were able to make decent headway as the roads were on the quiet side for a Saturday morning.
Racing away into the estate Jim turned round and ordered Mark and I to put on our breathing equipment these were known as our B.A. This was strange because Mark and I were two new recruits with only a few months active service and to be blunt no experience other than in simulated conditions at training school, we were not in any position to argue , this was the real stuff ,the thing I joined for and the adrenalin was pumping. As we approached the house we could see crowd of people stood round the house were the fire was, there was no visible smoke coming from the house, sometimes you can see the smoke bellowing out from miles away.
We arrived at the house with the customary skids from both pumps and all hell is let loose as fire men rush about going to their positions when attending a fire, the older ones used to let the younger ones do all the running about, but that was accepted as the norm, after all the older ones did the same when they were young. Jim went looking for the householder to find out exactly what type of fire we were dealing with and more important were there any trapped people and where the fire was.
A middle aged lady came running out of the house and shouted to Jim that the fire was upstairs " it's the kids bed its on fire" , she shouted. By this time I had the hose reel and was heading towards the door with a head of steam. Jim gave us orders that the bed was on fire in the first bedroom but there were no people involved . I headed up the stairs closely followed by Mark , both wearing our B.A. masks to provide us with oxygen in a smoke filled room. We entered the room, I was the first in, the room was completely dark although outside was a lovely sunny day. I was feeling mixed emotions about what I was doing mainly fear, I found a bed with my right hand.
This must be the bed I thought, remember it was pitch black, you could not see anything because unbeknown to me the bed that was supposed to be on fire was indeed a cot mattress, the lady had leaned against a two bar electric against the wall. Her child had wet the bed and the women had put the mattress to dry against the fire. What a stupid thing to do ,the mattress then flopped onto the fire and had been cooking giving off large amounts heat, the only reason there were no flames was because the cooking process had exhausted all the oxygen up in the room, this was a time bomb ready to go off. Little did I know that I was the one to feed the fire with the oxygen it needed. In a split second I sprayed the wrong bed with my hose reel, the jet of water induced oxygen into the room and the whole room exploded.
In an instant I felt my hands melt like plastic, nothing I had trained for had prepared for this. Then a strange thing happened I could see a beautiful sun lit lane with a gate trying to beckon me towards it, somehow looking back I didn't think it must have my time to go, all this happened in a split second , nothing I had done had caused this , it was just the wrong information from the house holder. I was now in very deep trouble. The room was now well alight, Mark was a bit luckier than me he was blown out through the door back down the stairs to relative safety. I was blown into the corner of the room and by this time was well ablaze . My fireproof uniform was burning through , my plastic fire helmet had melted and I was in a big mess.
There was some kind of cupboard or wardrobe in the corner of the room where I landed and I tempted to crawl into it for safety, but I remembered my training, they told me never to such things, or you may get cooked alive, this was now happening anyway. My other colleagues were desperately trying to get into rescue me but the heat and flames drove them, the whole room was an inferno, I really thought I was going to die once again all this happened in split seconds. Something gave me help and I managed to drag myself against the back wall of the room, I dragged myself on the elbows my hands were badly burned and had melted with the heat.
Then I saw a small chink of light above my head and in a split second I lunged at the light .it was indeed a window, covered in black soot but still a window. I lunged at the window and broke the glass with both burned fists, cutting the arteries on both wrists with the glass. My natural reaction was to lunge out of the now broken window . I must have done one somersault on my way down because I ended up on my back looking up at the flames licking out of the window thanking God I was alive. Two of the fire men picked me up and leaned me up against the garden wall. I was in a bad way my wrists were squirting blood and I was very badly burned.
A policeman arrived to help me, he asked if there was an ambulance on its way , but would you believe that no one had called for an ambulance. The policeman bungled me into his panda car and speeded towards Huddersfield Royal Infirmary . Unfortunately for me the panda car didn't have a siren and it took us twice as long to get through the traffic in the town centre .
We finally ended up at the hospital , the panda car was covered in blood and I had passed out, I woke up five days later in the intensive care unit and then transferred to the burns unit at Pinderfields Hospital Wakefield burns unit, where I had plastic surgery and was in and out of hospital for the next two years. Looking back my wish to come out of the fire service came true, although I did not expect it to end the way it did. The fire incident itself was a complete mess from start to finish, none of the procedures were carried out correctly even down to not calling an ambulance ,I often think that some of the blame might have been attached to the fact that we had been on strike, not done anything and lost direction and cohesion , no teamwork is a bit like football teams playing their first match, the only thing is that I was at the loosing end of the game. Some people thought I would get compensation , but sadly my accident was fought by the fire brigade union who gave up my case due to lack of evidence, I would say lack of interest.
The good thing about this story is that it all concluded in a happy ending , I ended up back working in the car industry where I met my lovely wife of now thirty years Michelle. We started our own business in West Yorkshire and have had eight wonderful children, we now also have two grand children and a third one on its way to our first child Claire. Most things since that dreadful period of my life have gone really well, we are now on our second online and auto centre business at www.pellonautocentre.com and a garage business in Halifax, and are still enjoying life to the full.
About the Author
Eric K Roberts is the proud owner of Pellonautocentre in the UK. he also offers tyres at www.pellonautocentre.com and batteries on www.batteriesontheweb.co.uk
