IN WILTSHIRE, ENGLAND, A NEWLY-INSTALLED computer program at a regional ambulance dispatch center has failed to dispatch ambulances. 

The new system just went into service a couple of weeks ago on the 16th and already they have a case on their hands where a man died while waiting for an ambulance that never came. 

Many of the streets in the shire are not even entered in the program, including one street that an ambulance station is located on.  One dispatcher says that most of the addresses that they get are wrong and that often they have to phone the people back who called to get more information.

Read more about this total mess in the Wiltshire Times HERE.

Great Western Ambulance Service

BBC images 

A RESOUNDING EXPLOSION AT AN OIL REFINERY this morning shook houses more than 15 miles away.  The accident took place about 30 miles southeast of London at a Petroplus refinery.  Petroplus is a Swiss oil company that purchased the Coryton facility from BP earlier this year.

The resultant fire was confined to a cracking tower where the explosion occurred.  The fire brigade got the fire under control in about four hours, but it is still burning.

According to Sky News, the Coryton refinery was constructed by Mobil and opened in 1953.  Two major expansions and many minor improvements have increased the refinery capacity to 10 times the original volume.  It produces 13 million litres of petrol a day, plus liquid propane gas, diesel, and aviation fuel.

The BBC has an early STORY.

Some chemistry students at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, put together a chemistry show for high school students as a way of showing them that chemistry can be interesting and fun.

One of the skits was the “exploding pumpkin” routine.  They  combined hydrogen peroxide, which reacts with the inside of the pumpkin to form oxygen and water, with calcium carbonide to create a gas. Two minutes later, the gas was ignited, blowing pre-cut sections out of the pumpkin.

“I think we’re convincing some people,” said senior Teresa Beary, president of the Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society. “We’ve had the biggest crowds today of any time we’ve done demonstrations. Any time you include explosions in a public place, people are going to come.”

Click to play the video.

HAS THE “ANIMAL FARM” REVOLUTION BEGUN?  Some people are wondering after a hunting dog shot it’s owner on the opening day of pheasant season in Iowa Saturday.

James Harris was hunting with a group when one of them downed a pheasant.  It fell on the other side of a fence and Harris went to retrieve it.  Before climbing the fence he laid the gun on the ground, neglecting to engage the safety. 

However the dogs followed him too closely, stepping on the gun’s trigger before he managed to get over the fence.  About 100 to 120 pellets of birdshot hit him square in the left calf at a distance of just three feet.

He’s reported to be in satisfactory condition in the hospital, but he will be very uncomfortable for a long time.  The dog was not injured.

The AP has a brief story HERE.

A MODERATE EARTHQUAKE RUMBLED THROUGH the Calaveras fault last night at 8:04 Pacific time.  The Calaveras fault runs through the San Jose, California, area and last night’s quake registered 5.6 on the Richter magnitued scale.

Since the initial tremor there have been more than 30 aftershocks recorded.  The epicenter of the quake was in the Diablo Range foothills east of San Jose, five miles from Alum Rock, seven miles from Milpitas and nine miles from San Jose City Hall. The shaker, scientists said, originated 5.7 miles below ground and was felt as far east as Sacramento and as far north as Sonoma.

The San Jose Fire Dept. reported no unusual activity except for a few broken water pipes and a brief spike in medical calls.

The San Jose Mercury News has MORE.

IN THE CLEVELAND, OHIO, SUBURB OF EUCLID, a teen stole a private ambulance from the parking lot of a restaurant yesterday.  The ambulance attendants had left the keys in the ignition.

The police were immediately notified and they located it quickly.  After a short chase the ambulance collided with two other vehicles and rolled onto its side.  No one in the other vehicles was believed to be hurt, but police say the juvenile suspected of taking the ambulance in the first place did sustain a minor injury.

WKYC image

WKYC has a video HERE.

 
AFP photo

A BACKHOE EXCAVATING A DOWNTOWN STREET in the Paris, France, suburb of Bondy struck a gas main yesterday.  The breakage sparked a fire that initially torched about 60 feet high and set a building facing the street ablaze.  The fire spread into two adjoining buildings before it was completely extinguished.  The fire at the gas main continued to burn for 90 minutes after the supply had been cut off.

Reuters

The resulting fire killed one person and injured at least 42 more with 12 of them in serious condition from burns.

About 150 firefighters and 40 trucks worked the fire that started about 2 pm Paris time.  Gilbert Roger, the mayor of Bondy, said that a restaurant and another building had caught fire.

Reuters

“There was a very strong explosion,” a witness told French radio. “We saw people running. There were enormous flames, several metres high,” he said.

Le Monde has a pretty good VIDEO.

Odds and Ends this morning:

If you haven’t read last night’s postings yet, about 3 entries down is a brief article (HERE) about a fire engine rollover in central Virginia in which the RollTek SRP (side roll protection) system was deployed.  The RollTek system is largely used in the commercial trucking industry, but in the past couple of years some of the custom fire apparatus builders have been offering it as an option.

This is the first time that we know of where the SRP has actually deployed on a fire engine accident.  Engineers from both Pierce (who made this particular engine) and RollTek are at the location today and they will be able to do a thorough investigation of the event.  The first indications are that the device worked just as promised and protected the driver.  But we’ll wait until the pro’s finish their inspection.  Firegeezer’s apparatus expert, LightRock is keeping an eye on this one and will report back to us when the investigation is finished.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Yesterday I was reading an article in EMS1 (HERE) about a program in San Jose where they have purchased fire SUV’s and outfitted them with as assortment of ambulance equipment and a capability to transport a patient that is in a life-threatening condition.  The purpose of them is to get paramedics on the scene quickly and even transport if need be when the responding ambulance can’t get there in a reasonable time.

This program, which they call the S.T.A.R. program, was expected to generate at least one call a day per unit but in practice they were only being utilized an average of twice a week.  I gather from the story that they are independently staffed, so that’s 10 FF’s being paid around the clock for 10 responses per week.

So, in order to salvage the program, they are adding some firefighter tools too.  The plan is to use the STAR cars for non-emergency calls such as lockouts and broken water pipes, and keep the fire engines in quarters.  They are calling it a “pilot program,” but it’s really nothing new.  This concept has been tried several times in various departments over the years and it never has proven beneficial to the point that it’s worth spending all that money on it.  Usually the program runs until the vehicles need replacing and then the item is not budgeted.  The experiment then fades away.

In fact, my own department tried this same concept 30 years ago, using vans (they were popular then) and labeled it the S.E.R.V. program.  They always have catchy acronyms like that.  A couple of firefighters would take the SERV van out and inspect hydrants, handle the lockouts, etc.  And at night they would do fire inspections on places of public assembly.  It was right at the same time that the drive-in movie theaters were desperately trying to stay in business by resorting to showing soft-porn films.

All right, let’s get the equipment checked.  I’ll see you at the coffee table.

*  You may have heard about the four firefighters burned yesterday at a house fire in D. C.  Dave Statter has been on the scene and has the most comprehensive report of anybody.  The FF in the most critical condition is the son of one of Dave’s co-workers at Channel 9.  Be sure to read his stories HERE.  Some great video on there, too.

*  Firefighter Blog has a nice photo-montage video of the San Diego fires.  Scroll down after that and read the story of the four FF’s that got badly burned on the Harris fire HERE.

*  FirefighterHourly has been keeping up with the labor vs. chief situation in Topeka.  He has an UPDATE today.

*  Mike Love at Fire Chief magazine says that fire departments need to be more involved in the setting of building codes rather than waiting to enforce something that may be sub-standard.  Read his ARTICLE.

*  EMS1 is covering the debate in New Jersey about whether they should require two paramedics or just one on the ambulances HERE.

TRINITY UNIVERSITY OF SAN ANTONIO is 2 points behind.  There are only 2 seconds left on the clock.  So this will be the last play, their only chance to win the game and go into a tie for 1st place in the league.

They’re on their own 39-yard line, so it’s way to far out to kick a field goal.  That just leaves three choices:

1. A long pass
2. A running play
3. Make up a new play

Watch the video and see how it turned out:

Firegeezer says:  How many did you count?  I saw 13, but the news reports say 15.