Never block a fire truck

Fire trucks getting through
Parking on both sides makes the middle narrow.

I was coming down the one-way street where we live. There is parking on both sides, but that doesn’t leave much room. Years ago, when I had a conversion van, I managed to take off someone’s mirror with mine. (Yes, I dealt with it.)

On this particular trip, in addition to normal cars parked, I encountered a lawn service truck, an Amazon van, a City Truck and one collecting trash…and I barely made it through with my car. I commented in a post that a fire truck wouldn’t make it and was reminded of a couple of Dad’s firetruck stories and events, one courtesy of my sister.

What happens when you block a fire truck?

Fire trucks
Backdraft, a realistic presentation of real fire fighting

The movie, ‘Backdraft’ fascinated me. Dad was a 32-yr veteran firefighter in a full-time city department that had about ten “houses” around town. He was one of three “Chiefs”. He said “Backdraft” was pretty accurately done. I asked about the scene where there is a car parked in front of the hydrant and they break the windows and take the hose through the car.

“We would probably just use the truck to push the car out of the way. The car would be a wreck, but don’t put your car between my truck and our getting to a fire.”

Fire trucks
Dad’s “Company 1” Fire House, @ 1975
Long driveway attracts speeding drivers during the school day
Problematic long driveway at Holmes High School.
Entrance Gate Holmes High School
Entrance gate to Holmes High School. What you can’t see are the iron-works gates that matched the fencing to the right.

What happened when they blocked my Dad’s fire trucks?

Close to that in real life that involved Dad and his trucks happened at my high school around 1980 when my sister was a sophomore. There is a long driveway through the school and at times they would have problems with people speeding through there during school. On one particular day, someone chained shut the large ironworks gate. They weren’t supposed to do that, I’m sure, but those drivers and that long driveway could be disturbing and a safety concern.

There was a fire alarm and Dad was on duty.

When the trucks arrived at the school, they encountered the locked main gate. Guess what they did?

Dad never talked about that story, but sister tells me she remembers faculty talking about the Fire Department “busting the gates down”.