A Day at Home?

I was looking forward to a day spent just puttering around the house, or at least part of a day, as we have a party to go to this afternoon. However, that changed when the fire whistle went off. My husband is the head dispatcher for the Control Center in our town, and even though it was his day off, when there is a structure fire, he goes down and helps the dispatcher on duty. I am part of what is called Squad 10, which takes drinks (not those kind of drinks) to the firemen at the scene of the fire. Today's drinks of choice, since it is 80 degrees in the shade, were water and gatorade, which were slugged down in huge capacities. Fires that occur at 2:00 AM in January require coffee and hot cocoa, but there was no need for that today. The local drugstore seemed surprised when some of us came in to get ice, water, and more gatorade, but willingly let us have them with our verbal promise to settle up with them later. As a matter of fact, when I stopped in to do just that, the two wonderful ladies on duty said not to worry, that it was being taken care of. Either the company would end up donating the supplies, or they would take care of it. I thanked them, and vow to find out if the company did indeed donate the supplies, as I certainly don't want them to have to pay anything.

All is relatively well. The home was damaged, but not destroyed, there were no injuries or entrapments, the EMTs on the scene took care of the firemen who became overheated, and the scene is cleaned up. There is a lot of work to do on the house, but soon, I suspect, there will be a community benefit, because that's the kind of town we live in.

So to the kind ladies at the drugstore, the firemen from our town and 5 or 6 nearby towns, the two dispatchers at the Control Center, and the squad 10 people, thank you.