Firefighters respond to 4-alarm dud

By Tracy Farr
Editor, The Daily Spittoon

Members of the Crappie County Volunteer Fire Department responded to a house fire last Thursday at 301 West Apple Street that turned out to be more fire training than fire fighting.

"We got the call at 1:45 a.m., and most of us were on the scene three minutes later," Fire Chief Harry McSpray said.  "Johnny Gaines arrived about 10 minutes after we did, but that was because his baby girl Samantha was colicky and he didn't hear his radio go off."

McSpray said when the firefighters arrived at the scene, they found the family huddled under a neighbor's tree but saw no smoke or flames coming from the house.

"That family was holding onto each other and those little babies were crying," McSpray said, referring to the family's two-year-old twins and not to the family itself.  "Our sirens woke up the whole neighborhood, and we had quite a crowd."

Even though the firefighters saw no flames or smoke coming from the house, they still chopped their way through the front door with a set of newly purchased axes.

"The axes were part of a shipment of new equipment that we put in our 2007-08 budget," McSpray said.  "Boy, those axes were so sharp they cut through that solid maple door as if it was paper."

Upon entering the house, firefights heard the unmistakable chirp of a smoke detector in the kitchen.  With water a-spraying and axes a-chopping, the firefighters fought their way through the living way and into the kitchen -- only to find there was no fire.

According to McSpray, the chirping sound from the smoke detector wasn't foretelling of a fire, but was a warning that the batteries needed to be changed.

"It's always better to err on the side of caution," McSpray said.  "This family did the right thing by getting out of the house and calling us.  This is also a good reminder to the rest of us that if we didn't change our batteries in our smoke detectors when the time changed a couple of months ago, it's time to do it now.  And it's much better to change the batteries than to have us do some firefighter training on your property."

Insurers estimate the damage done to the house due to a dead battery could run into the thousands.