Fire chief recounting over 30 years fighting fires and conducting search and rescues in Alaska

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

from " North Pacific Processors Cannery Fire"
That’s where I had the fork lift hoist Kyle up where he cut a strip out of the ceiling so we could see into the concealed space. While Kyle was cutting the ceiling, Loyd was working the bombline and some others were using a handline trying to get streams of water into the ceiling assembly of the egg room. That was just busy work and everybody knew it.

Funny, it was about that time, the dispatcher radioed me, but because of the noise, I couldn’t understand her and stepped into a compressor room and closed the door. She said she had on the phone a Tom Wells, Haz Mat specialist from the Anchorage Fire Department. Wells wanted to know if we wanted a 3-man “assessment team” to come down? I asked “What does he want to assess?” A moment later, she replied, “The ammonia system”. I explained to thank him but that we had the ammonia shut down. I went back out but a few minutes later she called me back. I stepped back into the compressor room where I could hear her say that Tom was on the line again and he wanted to be sure I knew that “it was ‘free’”. I almost felt guilty by saying “no” again. Incidentally, the next day when I talked to Tom on the phone, he explained that he’d received a call from the State’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) wanting him to go to Cordova to assure there would not be a release of ammonia. They had heard of the fire and before the fire department was in full operation, they were calling for outside expertise.