Busy shift with Lodi Fire
Dedicated firefighters handle car crashes, blazes
I arrived at the Lodi Fire Department’s Station One on West Elm Street just after 10 a.m. Wednesday for a four-hour ride-along to get an idea of how many calls the firefighters respond to in a day, and barely had time to shake hands with training officer Paul Alvarez before we responded to a traffic collision at the intersection of Turner and Lower Sacramento roads.
Speeding down north on Church Street in a gray Dodge Challenger with the siren blaring, Alvarez slowed as we approached a red light at Turner Road before once again picking up speed.
We arrived within minutes to find firefighters placing red metal struts on either side of a green Chevrolet minivan that had overturned before carefully extracting a passenger and helping emergency medical technicians load her onto a stretcher before she and another patient were taken to the hospital.
“We put stabilization on the vehicle with struts so that it doesn’t roll over when our guys are inside working on the patients and we can safely extricate them,” Lodi Fire Battalion Chief Michael Alegre said.
While officers from the Lodi Police Department conducted their investigation, I climbed into the back seat of Lodi Fire’s Truck One, driven by Engineer Roger Varwig while Capt. Shane Langone rode in the passenger seat and Capt. Jim “Jimmy” McClain steered the rear end of the 64-foot fire truck from the raised tiller position. “A tiller-operated truck needs two drivers: One in the front and one in the back,” Langone said. “We can get into places our engines can’t, but even with our 100-foot aerial ladder, we can barely reach the roof of Lodi Memorial (Hospital).”
Besides the aerial ladder — which can support up to 500 pounds when fully extended — Truck One also carries a wide variety of tools such as axes, the Jaws of Life, cutting torches and three rams of various sizes used to push dashboards off of people trapped in overturned cars, Varwig said.
“It’s basically a rolling toolbox,” Varwig said. “Our responsibility at a fire is to do searches, ventilation as needed and forcing entry into buildings.”
“We do have one hose, but we try not to pull that out because then we’re locked into an engine role,” Langone said.
Although McClain normally commands Engine One, he filled in on the tiller position on Wednesday as his engine was unstaffed — or “browned out,” — that day, according to Langone who commands Truck One.
“When Engine One is shut down, they disperse people out into open spaces. We had an open space on the tiller today, so he’s here,” Langone said. “Tonight at 8 o’clock, Jimmy will go back to Engine One and they’ll be in service until 8 o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Lodi firefighters work 48hour shifts known as “tours,” Langone said, with his current tour beginning at 8 a.m. Wednesday and running until 8 a.m. Friday, and the number of calls they respond to varies from day to day.
“Every day is different, but I’d say 12 calls is the average,” Langone said. “We were browned out two tours ago and we handled 19 calls in 24 hours.”
Shortly after we returned to the station after the collision, we were dispatched to a medical call at a residence on the 200 block of West Oak Street where a woman reportedly had difficulty breathing at approximately 10:49 a.m., although we left almost as soon as we arrived as an ambulance had already responded.
“They cleared us to leave,” Varwig said. “They have three people in the ambulance, so they didn’t want to tie six people up.”
We received another call at approximately 10:58 a.m. about an unresponsive resident at a retirement home on the 900 block of North Church Street, and the firefighters walked quickly through the building with McClain carrying a red duffel bag filled with medical supplies.
After the trio helped EMTs load the patient into an ambulance, wearing a breathing apparatus, at approximately 11:15 a.m., we made our way to an abandoned building on North Main Street where Langone said a series of recent fires had demolished the exterior stairs at the front and back of the building.
Langone said fires at the building have been an ongoing problem, made even more difficult by transients living inside.
“One thing, for us, is we do have to consider all of these boarded-up buildings as occupied because there are so many transients,” Langone said. “All it takes is for one person to say there might be someone inside, and we’re risking everything to rescue them.”
As Varwig and McClain carefully maneuvered the truck through the alley and back onto North Main Street, we received a call about a structure fire at a residence on the 200 block of Redwood Street at approximately 11:22 a.m. to find a pile of various items on fire behind the house.
Engine Two arrived just after we did and was able to quickly extinguish the fire before it spread to the building, although Langone said that a larger fire would have required all 12 of the firefighters on duty that day to respond.
“When we get a structure fire in the city, we have every unit dedicated to that fire,” Langone said. “If we get a medical call, we have to call resources from Woodbridge or Stockton to cover the city.”
While the firefighters removed their protective clothing — known as “turnouts,” — Lodi Fire Chief Gene Stoddart said his department has already seen an 18 percent increase in calls from the previous year, while the county’s average was only a 12 percent increase.
Approximately 10 percent of Lodi Fire’s calls from last year involved transients somehow, Stoddart said, and they have even begun keeping track of transient-related fires in particular, which he said have become increasingly common.
“It really scares us because we’re coming up on winter, when they’re more likely to start fires to stay warm,” Stoddart said.
We left the scene of the fire at approximately 11:40 a.m. and returned to the abandoned building on North Main Street for a demonstration of Truck One’s aerial ladder, which features an oxygen tank on its side that a firefighter can connect his breathing apparatus to as well as a water pipe and nozzle that Varwig said can pump 1,250 gallons of water per minute.
“Going up this ladder, we’re wearing an extra 60 to 80 pounds of gear and we’ve got tools in our hands. We’re passing tools up the ladder,” Langone said.
Using controls at the ladder’s base, Varwig maneuvered it to a corner of the building before I put my fear of heights aside and took my turn climbing to the roof.
“For us, the strongest points of this building are the corners,” Langone said.
As we walked along the roof, Langone and Varwig pointed out holes they had made during previous fires to provide ventilation.
“We’re basically creating our own chimney, giving the smoke and heat somewhere to go,” Varwig said.
Through the open windows on the roof, Langone pointed out evidence of transients living in the building such as lawn chairs, garbage, a hypodermic needle next to a beer bottle on the roof as well as a ladder inside the building tied to a rope that was likely used by transients to access the roof.
“I can guarantee you that there’s feces in there, you can smell the urine and we’re crawling around in this,” Langone said.
After I made the equallyfrightening climb down the ladder, we made our way to a parking lot behind the Lodi Grape Festival Grounds where I got a crash course in operating the tiller from McClain — using the steering wheel to keep the back of the truck in line with the front as Varwig made several slow turns around the parking lot.
After McClain demonstrated how an experienced tiller operator — a job that requires a minimum of 10 hours of driving on a marked-off course and another 10 hours of street driving — can maneuver the 64-foot truck around tight corners, we returned to the station where firefighters eat, exercise, train, study and sleep in between calls.
“This is our home for 48 hours,” Langone said. “We won’t leave here until we get off on Friday at 8 o’clock in the morning.”
At approximately 12:58 p.m., we received a call about a medical alarm activation at a house on the 500 block of Sturla Street where a 97-yearold man had fallen, with Langone receiving updates from the emergency dispatcher on an iPad mounted on the dashboard in front of him.
“They sent us the door code, so we don’t have to break the door down to make entry into the building,” Langone said.
Even though cars moved out of the way for the truck’s sirens, Varwig still slowed as he approached red lights, sounding the horn until he was certain no cars were in the way before proceeding.
An ambulance was already parked in front of the house when we arrived, and Varwig entered the security code to open the door before they and the EMTs helped the man to his feet and we made our way back to the station.
Besides the classroom where firefighters study for promotion exams and review footage from fires, the garage where they inspect equipment and exercise and the 18bed dormitory where they sleep at night, Langone said he and his fellow firefighters spend much of their time in the kitchen.
The kitchen is just as much a place for talking and decompressing after stressful calls as it is for eating and watching television, with the station’s TVs and all the food paid for by the firefighters themselves.
“We try to cook, but sometimes we get a bunch of calls and there isn’t time, so we’ll go out and get something when we can,” Varwig said. “We always eat together, though.”
“We cook for ourselves, we clean for ourselves. On Saturdays we do equipment checks and on Sundays, it’s housecleaning,” Langone said. “It’s like a second home, a second family.”