Fires!

Sat, 23 Jul 2005 21:26:21 GMT

The psychiatric hospital at which I worked was very sensitive to the issue of fire, as well it should be. Any facility that is responsible for the lives of everyone in the building must be. That is the reasonable part of this story. Possibly the last reasonable part. I personally got in trouble for putting out fires on three occasions.

On the first occasion I was a new employee and didn't know any better. We were on an all male unit and the game room had a pool table and a TV set, and other entertainment like books, games and other things that the patients ignored. I was standing outside the door to the game room talking with a patient when I heard the sound of an imploding TV cathode ray tube. When I went in, it was, of course as I had expected. Someone had thrown a billiard ball through the TV screen. Inside the TV, the high voltage transformer was arcing, sputtering, making lots of smoke, shooting fiery sparks into the room and generally looking dangerous. The patients were of no help as they were arguing loudly about who threw the pool ball and who would have won the game had it not been thrown. During this excitement, staff had called Security and the Fire Department. Being new to to State work, I didn't know that I was not to do the logical thing so when I walked across the room and pulled the TV plug from the wall socket I was unaware that I was doing anything wrong. I was wrong. I had somehow denied the Fire Department and Security the glory of saving the unit. I guess.

The second time I put out a fire was even sillier. I saw smoke coming from under the door of the janitor's closet. Again I thought I should do something about it (though I had been given several years to learn the rules) so I did. I opened the door, found a dry mop smoldering from a cigarette being kicked under the door and I poured my coffee on it. Of course the Fire Department and Security had been called, ran onto the unit and started on me again. By that time I had reached a position of enough authority that I simply said, "The mop was on fire so I put it out. You may clean up if you want," and walked away.

The third occasion was much more serious and everyone on the unit had worked together perfectly to get all the patients outdoors, make sure all were accounted for and taken care of. A psychiatrist and I went into action because a bedroom was clearly on fire. He felt for heat at various levels of the door before opening it while I got a fire extinguisher. We saw it was a mattress on fire, the kind of foam that produces very toxic fumes. Suddenly I remembered all the training I had dozed through, hyperventillated myself and ran low into the room to spray the mattress with fire suppressant. At the time, the room was so completely full of smoke that one couldn't see more than two to three feet. I had to repeat the performance of hyperventillate in the hallway, spray the mattress and check for patients on or under each bed four times. No one hurt. Fire out. Lots of smoke on the unit. Two doors open to clear the fumes. Dr. R. and I were about to give each other the shrink equivalent of a high five when my boss, the program director, walked onto the unit and just looked around without saying anything to us. He went to talk to the other staff who were watching the patients in the courtyard. Of course Security came then and actually set up a fan to clear smoke out of the hallway and the Elgin fire Department which the hospital retained at a charge of $700 per response arrived, lights flashing and siren screaming. One of the nurses asked if I was alright and my response was "Sure. Why?" "You're all white." "Huh? Oh. Yeah. That's the powder from the fire extinguisher." The Fire Department pulled the mattress out into the side yard and poked it until they got it to smoke a little then put it out again. My boss never said anything to me or to Dr. R. about the incident at the time. He waited until the next general medical/managerial staff meeting attended by about 40 or so paychiatrists, physicians, nursing administrator, supervising nurses and unit directors to say anything. What he said absulutely stunned me. "As you know, there was a fire on ATC-1 last week. Not everyone evacuated the unit." Before I stopped my mouth, I looked at Dr. R. and said, "No. Some of us were putting out the f***ing fire!" I suppose I could have phrased it a bit more elegantly, but the man got exactly what he deserved. Every single person in the room burst into laughter at him, humiliating him badly.

Oh, yes. I paid for it later in various ways, but I would never take it back in a million years.

Peace, Doc

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Fires!