‘No school’ day brings students to Woodstock’s Fire Station 25

Published 12:00 am Sunday, November 24, 2024

It was Friday, October 11th, and there was no school due to a Portland Public Schools teacher-planning day. By invitation, twenty parents and grandparents and a dozen children walked from Woodstock Elementary School to Fire Station 25 on S.E. 52nd Avenue, just north of Holgate at Mall Street.

The field trip was part of a monthly “Woodstock Walks” series organized by Catie Tam, head of the Neighborhood Accessibility Committee of the Woodstock Neighborhood Association.

As the group gathered in the firehouse garage, a siren sounded and an engine pulled out to respond to an emergency. Then the children climbed into the remaining truck and spent fifteen minutes exploring it, and looking at the equipment in the storage compartments.

When everyone had gathered at the end of the ladder truck, fireman A.J. explained, “We have four basic tools that we use.” And, one by one, he displayed them:

• The Halligan, to pry open the front door of a house
• A fire ax, for chopping into wood to get into a space to attack fire
• The “New Yorker”, a long metal hook to pull the ceiling down to spray in water
• The TIC – a “thermal imaging camera” to see the interior of the house through smoke, or to see hot spots in walls and ceilings that are not visible to the human eye

Next he began to dress himself into his firefighting “turnouts”: The big suspenders hold up the pants with heavy pockets; the hood covers the whole head and neck; very thick padded gloves protect from burns; a backpack with tools; and, for entering a burning building, a plastic shield mask with goggles and a large breathing filter. “If you see someone like this coming into your house during a fire, you don’t have to be afraid,” he remarked.

Very important family precautions before there is any fire:

• Every family should conduct a fire drill in their home or apartment, and have occasional practices. “A few minutes today is time well spent in planning for any emergency,” Rick Graves, Public Information Officer, Portland Fire & Rescue, told THE BEE.
• Each family should designate a meeting place outside the house or apartment. “We do not want anyone returning to the home if there is a fire”, said Graves. “Firefighters are well trained, and can safely enter a burning structure to search for a family member.”
• Bedroom and other doors should be kept closed at night – so any fire won’t spread easily.

Firefighter Jim shared the most important rule: “Every home should have working smoke alarms. That gives you the most time to get out of a burning building.”

Then, in answer to a question: “There’s a difference between a fire engine and a fire truck. A fire truck has an aerial ladder, but no water. A fire engine carries water on board.” This fire station has one of each.

Among questions posed by the children and adults:

Q.: How do you become a firefighter?

A.: You go to school – then you volunteer, take a written and physical test; and you have to be good with people. We have doctors who make career changes [and become firefighters]; people sometimes train even in their 40’s. But you have to be fit.

Q.: Why do we see you all the time at Safeway?

A.: We live here, and the cook lives here, so we have to buy groceries all the time [when we are not on a call].

Q.: Do you have a fire dog?

A.: No, we have no animals here.

Incidentally, about that Safeway question, the answer is correct, but there is more to it: Firefighters drive the engine when they shop for groceries, and need to be able to park it at the store, because they can be dispatched to an emergency at any moment, and must have the engine and their equipment with them in order to respond directly from the store. There’s lots of parking at Safeway!

After the tour, Woodstock Elementary parent Bryan Hiltner created a short video from the camera footage he had taken there. You can view it here – https://youtu.be/Cfj-X-Wzvrc