On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 06:31:04 GMT, Don Bruder wrote:
In article 4u1%e.84538$DW1.48492@fed1read06,
"SteveB" wrote:

The joke in southern Louisiana for the local volunteer fire department was,
"They always get there in time to save the foundation and fireplace."

Methinks that qualifies as what they call "gallows humor", no?

Yup. Careful with that around here. You'll get angry emails.

Air response, on the other hand, was fairly quick, since we've got the
tanker base about 8 minutes away by air.

Ah, we don't have that option. Although, the medical helicopters are
about 30 minutes out either direction which is nice. Again, that's a
LONG 30 minutes.

Unfortunately, keeping it from turning into a full-scale California
wildfire was the only thing they had any prayer of doing by the time
they were able to get bodies on-scene. The house was pretty much "It's
only still standing 'cause the wind hasn't blown hard enough to knock
the last of it over yet" when the first truck rolled up the driveway,
with some of the closer trees starting to catch. They put the hose on
the propane tank, and went to work knocking out the trees that were
burning, and didn't turn their attention to the house proper until the
second and third trucks rolled in.

Yeah, sounds like it wouldn't have mattered anyway. You might be
surprised how good a "totalled" structure can look.

Dave