31 days left

well, sunday morning was a very exciting morning to be a fire fighter. as my 24 hour shift was coming to a close and couldn't come more rapidly as i was at the station the entire time with zero action, zero calls and zero tv, we got a call just before it was time to change groups of bomberos (spanish for fire fighter). one drunk guy had driven a small 4 door truck into a concrete pillar of a house on one of the main roads here in town. by the time we got there, a small crowd of 50 people or so were standing around watching. it's typical work of a bombero to size up the scene as you pull up to an accident. the only sizing up that i was able to do was to decide which guy to take in the fight that was goin on in the middle of the street next to a messed vehicle. apparently, the drunk guy (boracho en espanol) was driving the his girlfriend's dad's truck. and when we arrived he (boracho) was fighting with said girlfriend's dad. so because of my size up, i took the dad out of the fight because he was bigger, i'm not real good at sizing up the scene yet. once we got them seperated and somewhat calmed down, we started trying to figure out what had happened and what we needed to do. there was blood in three different seats of the truck, but only one person was there, said boracho. the other three dissappeared before we got, which means, they can walk and run away, they don't need our help. but this boracho was a sight man. he was really drunk, and really crazy. he was mad, then he was sad, then he was mad, then he was crying...this happened for a few minutes. finally he started walking down the hill towards the dirty river (the river where all the sewage goes to from shell). it's probably 150-200 yards or so away. so we start talking with the police and yadda, yadda, yadda. i look down the hill and this boracho is standing on the rail, yes, the rail of the bridge like he is goin to jump off the bridge, fall 20-25 feet, and land in a gross 2-3 feet deep river that is full of turd and pee. my first thought was, "man, i don't want to have to go down in the river and clean this guy up." so i yelled at the other bombero to drive the ambulance down there and i took off running for the bridge. as i was running down there, another by-stander came up to the boracho and i assume started trying to ask him to come down and be careful and to not jump. whatever they talked about it allowed me to run right up behind him without him knowing i was there. my first instinct was not to grab him, but to just be there and be cautious of him. i didn't want to try and grab him and miss or scare and cause him to slip and fall and me be the reason for him goin down and possibly seriously injuring himself. so i'm just there, waiting for probably a long 4-5 seconds. he is on the rail looking down at the 20' fall, i'm inches behind him waiting and trying to think of what i should do. then out of nowhere, his legs bends, his shoulders cower, his arms come back with an erie confidence as if he is about to leap from airplane 20,000 feet from the ground with a parachute securly attached to his back. so i did what anybody else would do and quickly grabbed him around the waist and with every ounce of muscle that i have threw him back over the top of me into the street. once we hit the ground on the street i grabbed his arms, jumped on top of him putting my knees in his chest and waited for the other bomberos to arrive with the ambulance.

it was a pretty exciting morning. a good way to start the day off.