RE: What Is The Hardest Thing You’ve Ever Done?
July 17, 2023 at 7:27 pm
(This post was last modified: July 17, 2023 at 7:33 pm by Thumpalumpacus.)
(July 17, 2023 at 5:43 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:(July 17, 2023 at 2:36 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Watching helplessly as Airman White died while advancing to fight a training fire.
I was #1 nozzleman on PELELIU's in port fire party. One day we had a fire in the acetylene storage racks. I was pretty sure I was going to die that day.
A fire's no place for the faint of heart.
White went into the firepit carrying a dual-hose/nozzle, one hose/nozzle for flinging dry chem, the other to shoot Halon 1211 gas. They were held together by a brass fitting attached by Allen bolts. Think two hoses, two nozzles, bolted side-by-side into a brass frame so the firefighter may select either-or.
He was to attack the fire with Halon, but when he opened his Halon nozzle the entire nozzle frame assembly failed. The rapid release and recoil of high-pressure gases pushed the broken nozzle fittings under his crash hood and he inhaled a copious amount of dry-chem and a lot of Halon as well -- he was not wearing SCBA. I'll never forget our rescue crew doing CPR on him and seeing little puffs of yellow dust coming out of his face with each chest compression.
Investigation showed that one of the bolts holding the thing together had had a long-time crack and after a certain number of cycles it simply failed, and quite literally blew up into White's face. The Halon rendered him unconscious immediately, but it was the dry chem which suffocated him. We inspected the other truck with the same fitting, and the Chief mandated that all fires, training or real-world, would be fought wearing SCBA.
