Spot Light...
NEW FIRE HALL MOVE IN DAY Photo by Marshall Andreas
LA POINTE FIRE DEPARTMENT AMERY FIRE DEPARTMENT
Just over two years ago, in the early morning hours before the sun was even thinking about coming up, our radios, pagers, and E dispatching systems started telling us to respond to a fire downtown. It quickly became clear that the fire we were responding to was our own fire hall. On the way to this call, I contacted Police Chief Defoe to make sure that the officer who just got off duty took the ice road home to the mainland and was indeed not sleeping at the fire hall. With this verified as true, I went back to starring at the incredible glow in the sky I was heading to. As I pulled to the scene, it was surreal as the equipment bay was fully engulfed by fire and starting to collapse. Three fire fighters at this moment had also made sure our law enforcement friend was not in the building and had rescued whatever important files and the fire department equipment they could. The fire wall that separated the equipment bay from the officers’ dorms, office, and training area did its job and held for a short time. When the roof started collapsing in this area, it helped push the last firefighter out the window with the air being squeezed out of the dying building. I tried sizing up this catastrophe first by making sure everyone was safe and accounted for. This being the case we started doing anything we could. We busted the door down to law enforcement’s garage and got their vehicles to safety. We pulled the decommissioned ambulance away from the building.... incidentally the ambulance gave a fire fighter a safe retreat as the gable landed on the ambulance and offered room for escape. Shortly thereafter our friend Chief Hood from Red Cliff, with his wife Abby and a crew of firefighters, came across the ice road in their brush truck to assist. Chief Hood had the smarts to call
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1-800-822-1633
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