Gutted
This is where I was early this morning before sunrise. Second Sunday I've seen dawn from the wrong side in a row, and the second time we've come back clean from a call out. Atleast I actually got a few hours sleep before the pager went off.
Hang on, what's the Wellington Rural Fire Force doing at a structure fire in the middle of Lower Hutt? One of the things that we do (other than putting out bushfires and doing controlled burns), is providing catering at large-scale incidents - we have a well-equipped caravan for keeping hungry fire fighters fed.
The Lower Hutt fires went to fourth alarm - meaning they called for more assistance three times as the fire got out of hand - one of their initial water deliveries had a burning wall collapse on it and fire fighters were spending up to 80 minutes with BA gear, swapping for a new set when they ran out of air and then going back in) We were told that we were going to be looking after 50+ fire fighters. $400 at the 24-hour J-ville supermarket later, we were off to Lower Hutt to cook a BBQ breakfast of sausages, eggs, meat patties, fish, hash browns etc. Some of the crews had buggered off by the time we were set up, so there were plenty of leftovers to take back to the station and freeze for our Christmas BBQ.
Some drunken plonks stumbled up and asked if we were selling sausages. They'd didn't seem keen on paying $10 though.
We did actually end up lugging hose briefly when I spotted that one of the roof spaces had flared into flame again, and they needed a hand getting more hose off one of the trucks in a hurry.
Checkout chick at Woolies: "Are you having a big BBQ tomorrow?" WTF? Who goes shopping for tomorrow's BBQ at 3.30 in the morning??