STANDARD TRANSMISSIONS
Two year burn
By Rik Davie/The Scugog Standard

So how’d you spend your New Year’s Eve? At home with friends and family? At a local establishment imbibing a tad to ring in 2012? Or just spending a quiet evening by yourself, pondering the passage of time and that sort of maudlin ‘out with the old and in with the new’ pursuit?
_Some of Scugog’s finest, our firefighters, were probably hoping for one of the evenings listed above as 2011 faded and 2012 dawned before us.... They didn’t get it though!
_At about 11:40 p.m., the call came in from alert staffers at Crabby Joe’s that there was a building burning on the Scugog Lumber property visible to them out their back door.
_As always, our fire crews dropped whatever family endeavours were in play and rushed to the hall where they suited up and manned their trucks to rush to the Vanedward Dr. scene ... as did I, the intrepid, if somewhat long in the tooth, spot news guy who happened to be on call for the night.
_Why me?
_Well, as in all jobs where being on call on holidays is a part of the game, we try to set up the Christmas holiday watch so that the guys with small kids are home and, in our case as well, the younger ones who might actually have a social life can have the night off holiday. The really young ones and the really old ones (read, ME) take the on-call on those days of festive note.
_So I was there to see how well the system really works.
_The trucks arrived about when I did and after seeing their way was barred, cut, chopped or whatever it took to get through the gates and were hauling hoses in the cold, wet weather within minutes of the call coming in.
_I began shooting the scene and working in the time-honoured way of the news photographer, balancing between ‘getting it close’ and staying the hell out of the way of the crew that was hard at work to save the rest of the large lumberyard filled with stuff that would burn.
_It is interesting and impressive to watch a fire crew as it arrives at scene and begins the intricate ballet of preparation and execution.
_Training takes over as the pump operators establish pressure, and the lead men pull hoses from the truck and do the hook-ups that will give them the ammo with which they will battle the monster.
_The teams pair off to work the hoses - a man on the nozzle and his back-up right behind him to add stability and support should something go wrong. The teams know their jobs and you see the water directed to the places that will most likely tame the monster and stop the progress of the blaze. All the while, the officers and veterans circle the scene directing and re-directing the teams to the trouble spots; first low, then high.
_Then comes the huge blast from the truck mount hose unit that, back-lit in the dark night by the work lights of the rescue unit, looks like some Star Wars laser cannon firing onto the building with a force no man could control were the hose not bolted to tons of fire truck.
_As the war on the monster settled into a war of attrition, I glanced at my watch. I stood among the flames and the skilled crews and I realized that while they working and was I shooting their work, 2011 expired and 2012 arrived. I nodded to the officer next to me and said, “Happy New Year.” He stopped, noting the time, and gave me a knowing smirk. “Yah. You too.”
_Any humour on the scene ... always. I mean, hell, it took them two years to put out the fire!