Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, March 26, 2024. India TV.
Instincts cannot be unlearned. Early last Tuesday morning (March 26), a retired chief of the Baltimore fire department was wakened when he heard rumbling and felt his house shake. He lives a short distance from the Patapsco River. He said the experience “felt like an earthquake.”
Interviewed by The Associated Press in the U.S., former firefighter Donald Heinbuch explained that instinct told him to drive to toward the unearthly sound. Then, he described what he saw. “The (container) ship was there, and the bridge was in the water – like it was blown up.” (more…)
Royal Canadian Navy warship docked at CFB Esquimalt. March 2024.
About an hour into the tour, I discovered one of the secrets to Canada’s military capability at sea. The tour aboard HMCS Vancouver, a Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) frigate currently in a short-work period at the base just outside Victoria, had taken me through the operations room. I’d sat in the commander’s chair on the bridge. Then I’d seen the ship’s massive rudder system.
I happened to pause at a rack of fire extinguishers, helmets and gas masks. In the event of a major fire at sea, I asked, were the people assigned to fight fires on board the ship former civilian firefighters?
Lt (Navy) Konnor Brett guiding us aboard HMCS Vancouver.
“No,” explained Lieutenant (Navy) Konnor Brett. “Every member of the crew is a trained firefighter.”
And I realized immediately that teaching all RCN sailors to fight fires had nothing to do with personnel limitations and everything to do with practicality. If a warship couldn’t depend on every man and woman in her crew to quell fires, keep the sea from swamping the ship in gales or combat, and deliver basic first aid or rescue tasks, its effectiveness would be severely diminished at sea. “It’s a matter of the ship’s survival,” Brett said. (more…)
Crosby in Team Canada dressing room at Vancouver Olympics in 2010.
It was the day before New Year’s Day, four years ago. I had simply gone to exchange a gift at an electronics store in Oshawa. As I drove home that midday I remember listening to former Detroit Red Wings star Steve Yzerman announcing names of Team Canada hockey players for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
That’s when I was T-boned by a truck coming through an intersection. I remember my world spinning until I hit something else and came to an abrupt stop facing the opposite direction in the intersection. Next thing I knew, not an official, just a guy with a cell phone in his hand came to what was left of my driver’s side window.
