One minute we were sitting around a table having a few laughs, the next minute – literally – we were blazing through downtown Norwich blaring sirens en route to a fire at Chenango Memorial Hospital.
That was how quickly it went for the City of Norwich firefighters from deciding what to order for lunch to deciding, in a matter of seconds, how to take on a fire that, given the location, could have had disaster and tragedy written all over it. Making last-minute adjustments to his gear as we sped toward the high-rising smoke column above North Broad Street, firefighter Tracy Chawgo looked over at me (who looked like a deer in headlights, from what I’m told) and said, “This could be big.”
That was at 12:52 p.m.
The big excitement around the firehouse before that: I was fifteen minutes late for my shift on the EMS squad and missed two calls. That was all anyone could talk about the first hour I was there.
“You missed all the good stuff,” firefighter Jim Wallen would scold.
“Probably nothing will happen now for the rest of day,” firefighter Mike Powell would chime.
“We ought to dock your pay,” Captain Jeff Steward would add.
It was the joke of the morning. But there’s nothing funny about being late in this line of work.
“I guess it just goes to show how much difference a few minutes can make,” I said, in my best attempt at an after-school special flip-flop.
“More like a few seconds,” Chawgo replied. “A few seconds can make the difference.”
My hour of abuse was up at 10:30 a.m. That’s when the next call came in. “Turns out I might not have missed all the good stuff after all,” I thought. Little did I know.
Transports, transports, transports. That what we did from 10:30 to 12:30. Take patients from nursing homes to the hospital and vice versa. It’s not the most exciting aspect of their job, Powell and Chawgo admit, but you’d never know watching them work.
“Hey Bill, we’re here to kidnap you,” Chawgo joked with one patient, one of many humorous quips the pair exchange with patients. “But since you’re a Yankees fan, we’ll be good to you.”
The chatter with patients never stopped. Questions, small talk, jokes. Chawgo says it’s one of the most important things they do as paramedics.
“If the people are comfortable with you,” he said, “they are comfortable with your care.”
In between calls, the guys would fill out paperwork, re-supply ambulances, take training lessons on-line and play the occasional round of “pull my finger.”
“We have a lot of laughs around here,” said Steward. “You’ve got to.”
You’ve also got to be able to focus after what are sometimes long hours of downtime during a 24-hour shift, the firefighters say, admitting that was something that took time getting used to.
What hasn’t been hard to get used to is a recent upgrade in ambulance equipment – specifically heart monitors and defibrillators.
“That’s really made our lives easier,” said Chawgo.
As Fire Chief Joseph Angelino pointed out, between equipment and training, the Norwich ambulance is essentially “an emergency room on wheels.”
We finished up transports at 12:35 p.m. and were just about to order lunch and start my training – learning how to defibrillate and insert tubes into a dummy – when the pagers went off. “Norwich station,” was all the dispatcher said over the radio and everyone was out the door.
That was at 12:49 p.m.
“It’s not in the basement,” Captain Jeff Steward confirmed from dispatch as we came on the hospital. “It’s in a structure out back in the parking lot.” A relief. I was still a little freaked out, though.
“Why aren’t you taking pictures?” Steward asked, pointing to the thick smoke billowing high into the sky.
“Oh yeah,” I said, preoccupied thinking about all the different ways things could go wrong with this fire, forgetting that I worked for a newspaper.