New London

Two calls today one in New London and on in the big city of Andover. Today started out with sleeping through the night at Franklin which doesn't happen all the time and I can't say I am complaining about it. I got off shift at 7 and headed up to New London only stopping to grab a different pair of boots and at Dunkins for breakfast. The day started out just like at the other departments I have ridden at and that is with a truck check. We were doing the ladder, but unlike at the other departments by 830 we were down at the smoke house playing around with the stick. James showed me what he thinks about with apparatus placement on a scene as well as where to set up the ladder for a chimney fire and a second floor escape. He let me run the ladder and let up for both these senarios. It was similar to the bucket truck I run at the farm and will toss the ladder around quite a bit if you are not smooth on the hydrolics. We next grabbed ladder belts which are like harnesses and naturally they were 4 inches to big around for me at their smallest setting. I put my bunker pants on to try and take up some of the space which ended up working pretty well. We finished with that and headed back to the station and he was mentioning some of the things he looks for and does while driving and operating the truck. Soon after we got to the station we assisted New London ambulance with a med call and then We headed out to do some pumping on bog road. We were drafting out of a dry hydrant which is what mostly happens in Andover although theirs were set up slightly differently using 5 inch suction instead of 6 inch. I got to operate a top mount pump which works functionally the same as a side mount but is a little interesting to get used to. He showed me some neat tricks with watching your intake pressure instead of your water stream to see if you are losing the prime. We also did two different ways of starting the draft, first back filling the hydrant which means flowing water down the hydrant to make it easier to prime the pump, this also will push any dirt leaves and whatever else is in the pipe or on the strainer. The next time we did it with just the primer. It didn't seem to be any harder without back flowing the hydrant but this was an easier hydrant to draft due to not much height difference between the water and the truck. I managed to get the pump primed and flowing to the deck gun and then we packed up and headed back to the station. The afternoon was pretty slow and at one point we resorted to checking out each others strobe set ups on our personal vehicles and then looking at strobes online. That was all for the shift and Tomorrow is the last day. No big plans as of yet, accept maybe some hydrant testing and making a mount for the siren switch in the forestry.