[Richard Kimball]

I still remember my first CISD.

***Warning!!!***Do not read further if you're easily grossed out.

I was on the dive team and we got a call on a twin engine airplane that had gone down with seven people on board. It hit the ground at 600 mph and scattered across a large retention pond. None of the plane parts are bigger than a stove, and we ended up diving for three days, getting a couple of hundred body parts out of the water. I call dispatch about halfway through the first day and tell them we have to have something to put the body parts in because body bags are made for bodies, and these aren't bodies. Anyway, they send us CLEAR TRASH BAGS. Now, you can imagine what a six pound piece of person that's been strained through an instrument panel and left underwater for a few hours looks like. So, we cover the bags with tarps, and have eleven or twelve of them lined up.

Fire department decides to do a CISD. They bring in a "trained counselor." It's this sixties person who's going to help us get in touch with our "feeeeelings." We're all being pretty good boys, keeping a straight face and everything, when we hear a siren go by outside the station window. I looked out, saw an ambulance, and told the guys, "It's just the meat wagon." They all nodded, and the counselor put his head down and started shaking it.

So, after the counseling, they tell us to avoid violent stuff as much as we can until we've "readjusted." Yeah, right. The next thing on the agenda that day was continuing education. We had to watch a slide show called "Scene of the Crime." It had been put together by one of our investigators, and included close up photos of every violent murder in the city for the last three years. There was a three year old that had been beaten to death, a woman stabbed to death in the tub, a gay guy that beat his partner to death with a brass dildo, shoved it up his ___ and wrapped his head up in newspaper, then set it on fire.

I love the fire service. It's like a black tuxedo with brown hushpuppies; silly as all get out, but they're trying so hard you've got to be impressed.

[Yorlik803]

LOL......I was also on a SAR team that did a lot of body recoveries. It was grim work, but it was rewarding.
We were like the Mad Monks of the EMS..
I miss those days dearly. It was good work, and we made a differance. The funny thing about Volunteer EMS and Fire depts are that they are the most Conservative bunch of men and women you could meet. I guess the Libs only volunteer to save the whales.