We're Responding to A What?

There has been a laundry list of unusual calls, as you will find at any firehouse, but we always thought we caught the best ones. Sometimes they would start small, and gradually grow into the most intense incident you have had in a while, and sometimes they just started out strange, and remained unusual throughout.

For example, myself, and two other volunteers with no lives, were hanging at the firehouse, pushing pool balls around the table until late in the night. The only light on in the entire station was the one over the pool table. Suddenly, dispatch broke the night time quiet, and our pagers began to beep. Knowing we were the only three at the station, we didn’t run immediately, we all just paused from our play, and turned an ear toward the radio…

“Station 54, Lenni Road at the railroad crossing….”

The next few words were muffled on my pager. It sounded to me like the dispatcher had said, “10-81.” That was a ten-code for “DOA.”

The three of us dropped our pool cues and walked quickly toward the apparatus bays.

“10-81? Why are we going to a 10-81?” I yelled over the firehouse siren beginning to wind up outside. My curiosity fell on deaf ears, as we all began pulling on our fire gear.

Soon, the siren stopped wailing, and we had the bay doors open. The three of us stood under the door waiting for others to arrive for the call. For a moment, it seemed like it hadn’t happened. The chilly night air was quiet, the radio was quiet, and the road was empty. Finally, I could see headlights coming up the road and over the hill toward us; Then another, and another, all converging on our parking lot.

“What are we taking?” I yelled to one of the guys arriving.

“We have drivers for both the rescue and the engine, we’ll roll both…” he yelled back as he ran to the back of the bays to his gear rack.

I thought to myself, why take two fire trucks to a DOA, but who was I? I was the newest member and wasn’t about to ask questions.

Just then one of the arriving volunteers ran in yelling to nobody in particular, “What the hell do we take to a train derailment!”

Some of us piled on the rescue truck, and some jumped on the engine. The apparatus pulled out into the quiet night and began rolling up over the hill of Lenni Road. The loud engines roared disturbing the silent night we had just witnessed moments before. This would be a short ride however, just around the bend and down the hill to the railroad crossing. I began wondering, did they find a body on the tracks? Did a train hit somebody? Why didn’t they dispatch an ambulance if that was the case? My mind raced with anticipation until we began slowing down at the peak of the hill.



The rescue truck slowed almost to a stop, and I peered up between shoulders and looked out the front window. The scene was straight out of a made up disaster in my childhood backyard. In the darkness, and with the help of bystander headlights, several freight cars could bee seen lying on their side, across the street and their loads of stone dumped into neighboring yards.

“Oh shit! What the hell are we doing for this!” Voices began exclaiming their excitement and the radio began squawking with various voices requesting other resources. Our driver slowly proceeded down the hill careful not to hit any of the growing group of onlookers woken from their sleep by the wreckage.

As we got closer the train cars got larger and larger. It looked like an enlarged version of Christmas morning under the tree. For the next several hours we walked along the long line of toppled freight cars securing the scene and making sure nothing was leaking or smoking. It became an all night mission of securing the scene, keeping bystanders away from the toppled train cars, spitting coffee grounds out from poorly made coffee, and trying to stay awake.

Hours into the night a State Police car arrived at the crossing with a passenger in the back seat. It was the engineer of the train. Apparently the engineer was passing through this area on his way from the nearby quarry when he lost his load of some twenty rail cars most filled with stone. The engineer didn’t stop until he arrived at the rail yard several miles away, without most of his load.

Hours passed before we were released by Penn Dot and some highway workers. They officially closed the road and detoured traffic around the derailment. With no real fire hazards present we reduced our manpower to those who could hang around and keep bystanders away from the toppled train cars. By sun up, it was turned over to the railroad company and we were back at the firehouse, shaking our heads with amazement. The road would be closed for several days while the rail cars were cleaned up and the crossing repaired.

And so, what I thought was a medical emergency at the railroad crossing, turned out to be the first of many unusual calls I have had the pleasure of responding to over the years.