Reminder of the Trench Awareness/Operatons Class at Cibolo Fire Station. Training will be Saturday Feburary 27th from 9am to 4pm.

Any Windcrest members who would like to attend contact Joe Moran

 Any non-Windcrest Firefighters or EMS personnel who would like to attend contact Capt. Troncoso at 651-7837 or mtroncoso@ci.selma.tx.us

Wednesday of this week we had our monthly Association meeting. Besides the usual business and reports we discussed and made changes in our Pension Plan that will help us save money. The Association also agreed on the new stripping for the new Rescue the City is buying the Department.

Eric Vargas took Office at the meeting as our new Vice President. Tony Green (2006) and Aaron Ward (2006) celebrated their Anniversaries with the Department.  This months birthdays are Tim Villanueva (6th) and John Moseley (28th).

Our next Social will be Wednesday 31 March, details to follow!!

Attached are links for two news stories related to the fire service, one is a very positive story of the Washington DC Fire making 3 rescues of children during an apartment fire. The other is from Dekalb County GA were the first in companies did not find the reported house and 5 firefighters were fired and the Fire Chief resigned.

Washington DC Rescues

Dekalb County House Fire

WVFD was dispatched for the major MVA at Fourwinds and Walzem, BCFA advised they had reports of a vehicle that backed on top of another. Rescue-1,2 & 3, and Engine-2 & 3 arrived on scene to find one vehicle on top of the hood and roof of another. All occupants of the vehicles were out upon arrival, one patient requested transport by Arcadian.

While finishing up on the trash fire on Windsor Oaks, BCFA dispatched Windcrest to assist Converse with a structure fire on North St. Engine-2 picked up and went enroute with a crew of 4. Converse Command assigned WVFD to standby on the scene while they checked for possible extension for room and contents fire in a single family residence. Converse PD did a very effective job of not allowing any vehicles (including Converse T-7 or mutual-aid units) from interfering with fire-ground operations.

Departments on scene: Converse, Camelot, Live Oak & Windcrest. Kirby transfered to Converse station 1.

Windcrest was dispatched for the unknown type fire in the area of Windsor Oaks. The Chief and Engine-2 with crew of 4 arrived on scene to find two piles of trash burning behind one of the apartment buildings. The crew stretched the forestry line and applied CAFS while pulling the piles apart. During the call, BCFA dispatched us for the man laying facedown in the road.  The Chief cleared the trash fire and responded along with Rescue-1 with a crew of two from the station.

It appears that Nike has been airing Public Service Announcements aka "commercials" on all of the major TV networks (mostly during Basketball games) that one of their new brands of shoes may be causing fires!!!

Attached are two videos, one where the shoes caused a house fire, as determined by the "Fire Official" and the second video shows that Nike "knew" that the shoes may "spontaneous combust" as happened during the filming of a TV commercial!!!!

There has not been a recall as of yet....BUT will we keep you posted.

Click here for the spontaneous combustion video

Click here for PSA on shoes causing a house fire

WVFD was dispatched to transfer to Gardendale’s station while they were working a mulch fire with San Antonio Fire Department at  I-10 & Foster Road (New Earth Soils & Compost), Engine-3 went enroute with a crew of three and stood by at Gardendale’s station until ending up at the fire scene about 45 minutes into the transfer.
SAFD and several Bexar County departments were working a mulch/construction debris pile fire that measured approximately 350’ x 50’ and 10-12’ high. San Antonio units were applying water/foam on the west end with hand-lines and portable guns. The Bexar County units were using brush trucks to protect exposure piles on the southwest side.
Command was a “Unified Command” with SAFD Battalion-6 and Gardendale Chief. SAFD with Gardendale had laid approximately 3200 feet of supply line from a hydrant on the frontage road of I-10. The County Command was gearing up to establish a second water supply with a tanker shuttle when it was noticed that in coming units would have to drive over the supply line three times to make the scene. Since Windcrest noticed the supply line “problem”…guess who got to fix the problem? With a somewhat coordinated effort with SAFD the supply line was shut down and two 50 foot sections were added to allow the line to lie on the outside radius of the curves and clear the road for apparatus. Before recharging the supply line SAFD put a Pumper at the hydrant to overcome the friction loss in the first 2000 feet of line. This increased the flow from approximately 400 gpm to over 1000 gpm of on scene water. The tanker shuttle operation was put on hold and SAFD units did not flow water for the next two hours while an IAP (Incident Action Plan) was developed by Command. In this time period two of the exposure piles started to burn and SAFD and Bexar County’s Haz-Mat teams arrived on scene.
After the arrival of the Bexar County Fire Marshal’s Office, county units were released and SAFD took over the scene.
SAFD units on scene: Battalion-6, 6 Engines, 1 Aerial, 3 Grass Trucks, 3 Haz-mat units, Fuel Truck, EMS and the “Hired Gun”
Bexar county units; Gardendale 2-Engines, 2- 6x6 Brush Trucks and Command;  St. Hedwig Tanker & Brush Truck; Lone Oak Tanker; Sandy Oaks Engine & Command; Bexar Bulverde Tanker; ESD-5 6x6 Brush Truck; District 7 Tanker & Command; WMD Team 4; Rehab and BCFMO….and Windcrest Engine-3.
Video 1   Video  2   Video 3

The second day of training at the Pleasanton extrication school involved some great evolutions, the "Blue Team" consisting of Windcrest, Universal City, St. Hedwig, Seabrook and Grey Forest had three evolutions that all involved vehicles verses trees. The first was a tree on top of the vehicle, the second was a vehicle "into" a tree and the last was a vehicle rolled into a tree.

The first evolutions was pretty easy with the team stabilizing the large tree on the roof of the vehicle and cutting off the front doors. The second vehicle "into" a tree required 12' Paratech struts, straps, ladders and some great team work to remove the roof and doors. The last evolution the crew "tunneled" from the trunk and underside of the car to access the passenger compartment.

WVFD members attended the first day of the annual Pleasanton extrication school. Today we covered basic extrication skills including; patient packaging, hand tool extrication, vehicle stabilization, and hydraulic rescue tool operations.

The class had a evening session that involved several advanced evolutions with buses and 18-wheelers on top of passenger vehicles. 

Link to video of bus lift