One of the first things that I see this morning is the news about a firefighter in Wisconsin being killed when something inside a burning trash dumpster exploded most violently last evening.  It’s something that we have all known was bound to happen somewhere, sometime.  We have always preached that you never take anything for granted, such as “It’s only a dumpster fire,” but still there are times when you cannot defend against this kind of occurrence.

In this case, it may well have been a case of extremely unfortunate timing that was determined by fate.  The fire was discovered by a police patrol car who called in the alarm at just the wrong moment to set a chain of events in motion that ended up with a crew of firefighters at the scene just as the explosion occurred.  WLUK-TV Ch. 11 in Green Bay has this review that includes a press conference with the Calumet County Sheriff:

Dave Stater was working the news desk when the news broke and he has the best overall early coverage of the incident.  His story posted on STATter911 is the best place to start your reading and viewing of the incident, so CLICK HERE to begin.

Back when I was a young firefighter, a group of us traveled to the Univ. of Maryland’s Fire Service Training Institute to take a some weekend courses and I still have a handout that we received in one of them.  It was an inventory of the contents of half a dozen dumpsters that the FST’s instructors had chosen at random one day to rummage through and see what was laying in wait for the unwary fireman.  It was titled appropriately, “Just a Dumpster Fire.”  I’ll rummage around my box of old papers today and see if I can find it.  If I do, I’ll share it with you.  But I’ll bet that you could do the same thing with some trash containers in your own first due.

We’d better get our equipment checked out now.  This time of year we’re sure to be busy, so let’s make sure we’re ready.  I’m going to get a fresh pot started before we meet back in the day room.