Dear Santa Monica Fire...

...please, kindly, when talking on the radio, just STFU!

For a variety of ridiculous reasons, I found myself wide awake at 0330 hours this morning, and flipped on the scanner, which I hoped would lull me back to sleep. Also, we were in the midst of a gnarly windstorm here in L.A. so I figured things would be hopping with the LAFD (surprisingly, they weren't). But it was almost impossible to find out what was happening with the LAFD, LAPD, BHPD and others because the Santa Monica Fire Department was working a structure fire somewheres on Wilshire Boulevard with ONE ROOM involved that required constant communication on the Tac channel and to OCD on channel 7.

The most egregious offender was the captain on Truck 121 (above) who felt the need to tell. the. BC. every. little. fucking. thing. he. was. doing.

Example:

"Truck 121 to Wilshire IC, we've cut another small ventilation hole in the roof, which makes two small holes, plus two skylights and we're using the rotary saw."

"Roger Truck 121."

"Truck 121 to Wilshire IC, we're going to get ready to come down the ladder now since our truck work ventilation appears to be done and there is no more smoke coming from the fire room."

"Roger Truck 121."

"Truck 121 to Wilshire IC, we're getting ready to leave the scene and we just want you to know that we have left two shovels and a salvage cover inside the hallway next to the fire room so once the arson investigators show up, those can be used by whoever is here to do more salvage work and we can either pick them up later or blah, blah, blah, blah....."

"Roger Truck 121."

Wilshire IC himself--Battalion 22--wasn't much better as he constantly badgered OCD with one inane transmission after another. I mean, it's four o'fucking clock in the morning. I felt bad for the poor bastards at OCD who were just trying to get through the last few hours of what had been a really busy shift.

I mean look, I know I'm spoiled because I live in an area where the two biggest fire department's catch working structure fires like flies to honey, but still, last night's little structure fire wasn't the SMFD's first trip to the Show. I realize that working fires can be few and far between in smaller cities like Santa Monica and Culver City and Beverly Hills, etc., but still...I mean the shit coming out of SMFD's radios last night awoke distant memories of my years living in northern New England listening (and observing) as the local vollie departments would catch their one big fire of the year.....painful!

photo: Santa Monica Fire Department

End of Watch: Sgt. Curtis Massey

Culver City PD lost a 17-year veteran Wednesday morning when Sgt. Massey was killed in a head-on collision with a 21-year-old wrong-way driver on the Santa Monica Freeway. Sgt. Massey was driving into work at around 0530 when the collision occurred. You'd be surprised at how often people actually drive the wrong way on four and five lane freeways. You'd think it'd be a once-a-year occurrence, but it's often every few months. And these things almost never end pretty.

L.A. drivers are assholes, by and large. I was pondering this about 14 hours after Sgt. Massey was killed as I drove past the accident scene going the opposite direction. It was dark and I was clipping along at about 70 mph, so there wasn't really anything to see, other than a sea of headlights going the other way.

I was on my way to celebrate a friend's birthday in Santa Monica and was dealing with the various boneheads who were also traveling at high rates of speed westbound on the 10 Freeway that evening. Tailgating, no signal lane changes, high speed braking--all the usual symptoms of asshole freeway drivers in L.A.

I've found that when people are driving home from work they drive like total dickheads (especially on the freeway), which is in stark contrast to how they drive on the way to work. In the mornings, it's slow as molasses, commuters purposely taking their time to accelerate and making sure to stop for every yellow light. Nothing like the dread of actually arriving at work to organically create traffic jams.

Anyway, RIP Sgt. Massey.

SMO Crash Update

So it appears that one of the two fatalities in last night's crash at KSMO was the general manager of the Airliners.net Web site. I've long been a casual fan of the site, which depicts pretty pictures of commercial airliners in all manner of flight and ground ops.

Sounds like Paulo Emanuele was at the controls of the red Marchetti SF-260 when it lost power shortly after departing Runway 21. Still unclear whether Emanuele had turned around and was attempting to land on Runway 3, or whether the plane nose-dived and crashed before reaching the end of the departure runway. Reading the various news accounts out there this afternoon, I'm inclined to believe he hadn't gotten to the end of the runway and just nosed over.

SMO's runway is just under 5,000 feet and those Marchetti's don't need a long takeoff roll, so he probably got airborne abeam or slightly past the control tower and started having engine issues right afterwards. Sounds like he stalled and nosed over. Other scenario has him burning up precious airspeed as he was making a 180 to return to the airport and stalled afterwards.

Airplanes

Did a little flying in the past two weeks (as a passenger) and departed KLAX on a beautiful Thursday afternoon in the midst of L.A.'s annual January heat wave. Upon takeoff from Rwy 25R, glimpsed one of the LAFD's ARFF trucks doing a welcoming spray for what appeared to be a Virgin America A320 taxiing into its terminal. They must've been inaugurating a new service.

Upon my landing at KEGE roughly two hours later, fired up the BlackBerry to discover the first reports of US Airways flight 1549's unscheduled water landing. There's obviously nothing I can add to the incident other than to say 1.) "Sully" can be my wingman anytime and 2.) I bet I could've done the same thing on MS FlightSim 2004, except that there are absolutely no decent Airbus add-on products that I've found for the sim.

Since I'm about two weeks late posting this, I'll add this postscript: Watching live-streaming video of a fatal aircraft down at KSMO this evening. Looks like a two-seater aerobatic-type had engine problems after departure on Runway 21 and tried to make it back. Crashed on Runway 3 and skid off onto a northern taxiway, where it burst into flames. Two died. SMFD crash units and airport PD is on scene. Airport will be closed for awhile for the invest. Sadly, the pilot couldn't survive the crash landing and attempted the dubious trick of returning to the runway he just departed from; but his death on the runway avoided potential carnage in the residential area just west of the airport.

I Always...

...miss the good stuff. Case in point: I was watching the Pitt/Clooney crew in a darkened movie theater while Santa Monica got their first Major Emergency Structure in recent memory around 7:30 last night! Usually I'm stuck in some restaurant while there's a good burner, in this case it was the cinema.

Would have been a good one to scan since it was the first big fire since the LAFD took over dispatch responsibilities for SMFD. Would have like to hear the integration in action. Next time.

Didn't even hear about it until this morning, and it's overshadowed by the terrible LODD's from the South Carolina fire.