Highland Beach firefighters extinguished a fire started by a downed high-voltage transmission line in front of the condo at 3525 S. Ocean Blvd. on Aug. 20. The call was one of six spanning less than 90 minutes that evening. Larry Barszewski/The Coastal Star
By Rich Pollack
For Highland Beach firefighters and paramedics, Aug. 20 was one of those days that they won’t soon forget.
The shift had been quiet, except for when power went out as generators were tested throughout the Town Hall complex.
Then power went out again around 5:45 p.m. and, a short time later, the crew assigned to the ladder truck was dispatched to an alarm call at a building just a short distance away.
So began a crazy early evening in which firefighters responded to six calls in less than 90 minutes and used a mutual aid agreement with Boca Raton Fire Rescue for the first time since the town’s department started up a little more than a year ago.
When the department was being created, skeptics wondered if a small-town department in a coastal community could handle multiple calls at once.
The actions of the firefighters and paramedics on shift that Wednesday provided the answer.
“That tested the scope of our response,” Town Manager Marshall Labadie said. “It worked the way it was supposed to. It worked the way it was designed.”
All hands on deck
As the ladder truck was pulling out of the station to respond to the first alarm call, the team saw smoke in the opposite direction and was flagged down by a resident who said a live power line was down and landscaping in front of a home was on fire.
While the ladder truck headed to the fire, the rescue truck at the station was sent to the original call, which turned out to be a false alarm.
As the firefighters at the downed power line waited for Florida Power & Light to arrive and cut off its electricity, the first call of people stuck in elevators — due to power failures — came in to dispatch. The rescue truck at the false alarm was able to respond and free the stuck resident, but within minutes three more calls came in.
One was about another downed wire. The ladder truck responded, and it turned out the line was not electrified. Another call was about a person stuck in an elevator — close to where the first person was trapped. The rescue unit responded to that.
At the same time, another call came in for a resident who had just gotten out of the hospital and needed help getting into his home.
That’s when Driver/Engineer Daniel Stearns called for help from Boca Raton Fire Rescue, which sent a rescue unit.
“You don’t want to make someone wait,” he said.
“It was controlled chaos but it’s what we’re trained to do,” said Stearns. “We’re trained to manage situations like this.”
While this was not an ordinary day in Highland Beach, it wasn’t a totally unexpected one, either.
“When the power goes out, everything is possible,” said Capt. Robert Kruse, the shift captain that day.
Although larger departments are used to handling multiple calls at the same time, the simultaneous events of that day were a first for Highland Beach Fire Rescue.
“For a department of this scope and size, this is highly abnormal,” Assistant Chief of Operations Tom McCarthy said.
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