I don't write about my job with Fire & Rescue NSW much, because, let's face it, we're paid to do a job, and generally the stuff we see and do is the business of those of us that went, and those involved. Pretty simple stuff, really.
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Anyway, I'm going to break the silence. This afternoon, a ridiculous, sixty second storm ripped through Mudgee. Power lines down, trees snapped off at the base, cars destroyed, trampolines blown across town... you get the picture. Lots of damage. Lots of services out to clean up the mess, and power out to a huge number of houses and businesses.
The truck I was on went to a power pole that had snapped at the base, with wires strewn across the road. Not a great deal we can do about this, surprisingly, except to secure the street and wait for the electricity authority. Power poles can't be fixed by the Police, the Ambulance, the Council or the local publican, and they sure as hell can’t get fixed by members of the public.
Why, oh why, do people who don't even live anywhere near the site of fallen power poles feel the need to do an inspection? Why is it so hard to just go "oh yeah, you've closed the road. Fair enough."
At one point I had to call the Police to assist us because one person insisted that we should let them through to check out the damage, after driving his car around our truck. Some other woman insisted that we arrest her if we had to, because regardless of what we said, she was going to walk straight past us, down to the power line.
The final straw that broke the camel's back was a female asking me what the emergency services were doing to arrange for people to charge their phones, given that there was no power.
I have a fair bit of patience in this job, but this afternoon was a bloody joke. You won't die if you can't look at the power line. You won't die if your phone goes flat. You sure as hell can’t fix the bloody thing, and we don't park trucks across the road just to make them look pretty. We're doing it for your safety, and whether you think you're better qualified, or have some immunity to electricity (wish I did), we get the final say.