Done!

A good test. This is me after 13-ish hours of a structure fire in near 0*f temps. The call came in at about 10:45 PM. I was sent with a Lt. to be on water supply as we have no hydrants in town but have a couple rivers/ponds and if need be, the ocean. I was left incharge of the water supply operations filling relay trucks to go to the scene 2 miles away. The house was determined to be unsafe for an interior attack with in minutes of the first crews arrival and after an initial search of the house to make sure there was no one in there (people or animals, we save both). The floors were giving out as the fire which started in the basement had already burned its way to the attic. There was no hope of saving it at that point so an exterior attack was set up. To make interior attack even less possible, it was so cold that the SCBA packs were freezing up too. Freezing was an issue all night, many pumps (on-board in the trucks) were freezing as well which made the truck useless for water transport. The first pumper I was with broke down 3 1/2 hours in, luckily we had a back up which was brought in. I continued there until dawn at which point everyone left the scene. Just a couple hours later we were called back. THe house had been brought down at some point in the night and was turned to a burning pile of rubble, which kept on burning which is why we were called back. To the scene I went this time, still near 0*f temps, flowing water on what seemed like an endless supply of fire coming from what was the basement which was now full of the house itself and everything in it that had not already burned. I was there until about 1 PM. Everything was frozen, my gloves, solid, my turnout gear, nearly solid (but still keeping me warm/dry on the inside). This was my first structure fire with this fire dept and my first in nearly 11 years as I took about 10 years off (moved a few times and trying to get on a dept each time I moved). Yup, it is still as fun, dangerous, exciting, exhausting as I remember it.