RMES Ride along

After seven years as a photojournalist and dozens of emergency calls I have never travelled to a scene with lights and sirens.

Until April 6 that is.

I was in the Chief’s office at the Redwood Meadows Emergency Services  (RMES) station to interview Rob Evans about his promotion to Fire Chief.

About five minutes into the interview Evans paused, said they had a call and left to see what it was.
They had received a call for a car fire on a service road in Kananaskis Country.

When I stepped out of the office to see what was happening, Evans asked if I had my camera gear and if I wanted to ride with him in the departments’ rapid response pick-up truck.

I, of course, said yes, went back into the office to grab my camera and while being careful to stay out of the way of the engine crew, go into the rapid.

The drive from the hall was fascinating, the first thing I noticed was that the sirens, which I’ve heard from the outside and are quite loud, are much quieter when heard from inside.

I was also stunned, more than I probably should have been, out how other drivers on the road reacted as we drove down Highway 22.

When I drive myself to the scene of and accident or fire, I have a general idea of where all of the responding police and fire units are thanks to my radio scanner.

If I am ahead of any emergency vehicles I frequently check my mirrors and makes sure to pull off the road and be out of the way well before they reach me.

Even without the advantage of knowing that they’re coming there’s no excuse not to get out of the way of emergency vehicles.

On this call, two pick up trucks continued driving, blocking the way, oblivious to us for some time as Evans honked the horn and worked to safely pass them.

I was told that this is actually about average but it does get worse on weekends as more people come out into the country.

We arrived on the scene moments after the engine did while that crew was still unrolling hose lines and getting their breathing masks on.

Evans said that everything went well at that scene. The proper strategy was with a combination of water and dry chemical extinguisher used to put out the fire.

With the fire out, they cleaned up their gear, turned the scene over to the Kananaskis Fire Investigator and returned to the hall where I was able to finish my interview with Evans about his promotion.

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First on the scene - a river rescue

It's actually been a long time since I've arrived first on the scene. With most of the hard news happening outside of the town limits it's pretty tough to beat vehicles that don't have to follow posted speed limits, red lights and the rest of the rules of the road like I have to.

On this river rescue I arrived first by about a minute or two. I was followed closely by Cochrane Fire Services Capt. Huw Jeffries in their ERU (its a pickup truck, I'm not sure what the designation means). He drove right onto the bridge to asses the situation. The Engine was off responding to what turned out to be a false alarm fire.

Moments later, two ambulances arrived and their crews started asking me  what was happening, which unfortunately I didn't know much since I had just arrived and only knew what had been transmitted over the radio (I did tell them what I'd heard the police say since I have no idea if ambulance crews monitor RCMP radio traffic).

Shortly after that the crews who had been paged into the fire hall for this call started to arrive with the necessary equipment to effect the rescue.

From there things progressed quickly, safety ropes were tied, water rescue team members got in position to back up the high angle rescue, and a firefighter climbed over the edge to effect the rescue.

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