A lot of the skills we learn on the job are not readily transferable to everyday life outside the firehouse. But there are times when life throws you a curve ball and, looking back, you’re surprised to see where your firehouse skills were useful. Case in point:

The township is upgrading our water meters. You make an appointment with the contractor doing the work. They show up with the new meter and 45 minutes later walk out the door leaving you with a more reliable, more accurate meter that can be read electronically. Or so they say.

So, recently the guy (or should I say the kid) shows up a couple of hours late. Okay, things happen, Not a problem, wasn’t going anywhere. I had cleared the area around the meter which is located in the first floor hallway closet. (We live in a townhouse built on a concrete slab.) I show him the meter; tell him it’s a relatively new one because the original one developed a leak and flooded the first floor; and that my wife requests he be careful not to get any water on the floor. He laughs and assures me care will be taken, placing a bucket with tools in it under the meter. Then I leave him alone to do his job, but stay within earshot in case he needs something.

A few minutes into the operation, I hear what sounds like someone opening a line in my first floor hallway. Stepping around from the kitchen to the hallway, I see a stream of water about the equivalent to a fully opened garden hose bouncing off the hallway wall. When I get to the closet door, the kid is freaking out. He throws a towel over the leak so the stream gets knocked down into the bucket which is filling up rapidly. Then he begins apologizing, says he shut the water service valve off, and doesn’t know why it didn’t work. I check the valve. Turning it has no effect. So, I’ve got a broken shut off, a water flow into my hallway closet that appears to be filling a five-gallon bucket in about half a minute, and an inexperience kid who is now apologizing incessantly.

Okay, it’s not a working fire, but it is an emergent situation that has to be confined, controlled, and resolved. The kid asks for a phone. I give him the cordless phone from the kitchen. He drops the phone into the now rapidly expanding pool of water. Then he seems to remember he has a cell phone, goes outside to call for help (bangs a second alarm) leaving me to come up with some way of mitigating my little disaster. Meanwhile my wife is upstairs. The thought crosses my mind, “She was worried about a few drops of water on the floor under the meter. How’s this little tune going to play?”

We’re now about a minute, maybe two into the incident. I’m thinking “salvage and overhaul” although I don’t need the overhaul. Use salvage covers to make water chutes? Maybe not. Take the first floor toilet off and let the water flow down the hole. Seems a bit over the top, but the toilet is the largest drain available. If I take the bucket under the meter and empty it into the toilet, that drain should be able to handle it.

The kid is still outside summoning the cavalry, so I go into the garage, grab a bucket, go back to the closet, and switch buckets. Empty the full bucket into the toilet, walk back to the closet (you never run at an incident), switch with the now full replacement bucket, and repeat. By now the kid is back and apologizing again. I go to the toilet and empty the full bucket. He immediately catches on (he’s bright, but inexperienced). We naturally form a bucket brigade like the old timers way back when. This goes on until his colleague shows up, but they can't find the outside water shut off. They call for reinforcements (bang the third). A few minutes later a journey man worker and a supervisor arrive. Acetylene torches, metal detectors to locate the outside shut off to our individual unit, and a lot of experience come in the door with the super and senior man. They quickly locate the shut off under 27 years of mulch and shut the water service down.

Now I go upstairs to inform my wife, wondering how she’s going to react to a flooded first floor when she was worried about a few wayward drops. After listening to my tale of woe, she goes down the stairs and becomes a diplomatic envoy (Liaison officer) going between the “mitigation team” (supervisor IC, senior man and two young guys Operations), the neighbors (as the PIO), and the “home team” (Logistics/Finance, me and her).

We move from mitigation to remediation. My wife brings a dozen bath towels down (Logistics) while I use a shovel (yes, a shovel) to remove water from the floor, dropping it into a newly freed up bucket.

Torches are used to cut the pipe, a new house shut off is installed, then the new high tech water meter goes on, and we’re ready to call it a day. Except I have to clear out all the wet items and saturated cardboard boxes, etc. Fans are put in place to run for a couple of days.

So, in the span of six hours I went from homeowner to IC (the kid needed some direction) to transferring command to the supervisor (who knew what he was doing, thank God), to Operations team member, back to IC when things were brought under control, and finally to homeowner dealing with the mess left behind. Who says firefighting skills are too specialized for everyday life?