First Fire Followup

I had no idea it was so late when we got back to the fire house after finishing our work at the sorority. I would have guessed we'd been there for 90 minutes, but really it was more like twice that. Lucky for me, my day starts late, so I could sleep late and then take it fairly easy till 3pm. In fact, I'll have a chance to snooze a bit on the ride to Manhattan, so by the time I have my first student, I won't be too tired. I really feel bad for the fire fighters who had to be up and at work just a few hours later. Today will be tough on them, which makes them that much more heroic in my mind.

Perhaps because of this knowledge, I felt guilty about having a chance to sleep late. I had a dream where the rest of the fire fighters were back at the station, cleaning trucks, cleaning hose, and so on, and I wasn't around to help. When I woke up, I briefly remembered that we'd been dismissed and that everyone had left, so I went back to sleep, only to have the same dream. I think what I'll do is head to the firehouse soon so that I can clean off the trucks or help in some other way.

It's worth noting, too, that 4 or 5 firemen from Gardiner were on call until we got back to the station. It didn't occur to me until we returned there that 'on call' means they were actually waiting at the firehouse in case of an emergency elsewhere, but of course it wouldn't be too helpful to have them standing by 6 or 7 miles away. So these guys stayed up till past 3am and had nothing to show for it. Good on ya, Gardiner!

As for the NPFD, we had 20 firefighters at the scene along with 5 trucks. From what I understand, everyone did a great job. No one was hurt, property damage from the fire was minimized, and the entire operation ran smoothly. Considering how few actual structure fires occur in New Paltz, that's pretty impressive. Good on ya, New Paltz!