F-A-B

[maggies_lens]

Well, that was certainly fun...NOT! Actually yeahi t was in a weird way. I did a very quick count of the jobs all my crews had at the end of the storm before I cleared the majority of it all. Geelong had 98 jobs, not including 2nd call, cancellations and stuff like that. South Barwon had 193 not including cancellations etc, Corio had 60. I did ok for the first 30mins alone but then the shit hit the fan so Shona and Alison came gaveme a hand for an hour. After that I was right to go it alone again. The worst thing was that Geelong's pager-printer cracked the sads and died, so my TL had to call each job through to them. We had a few handshake-errors which basically just meant that the page didn't work, they got repaged and seemed to work. The South West Duty Officers Pager on our system died totally so had to manually page, which means I call the pager company direct and they send what I dictate. For the first time ever I got to speak to them over air which was really rather cool. Nice guy named Tim who insisted on calling me Megan. :-))He KNEW it was Maggie, but said Megan sounded more like me. Bloody Torquay peeved me a bit, they kept coming up on the air for simle shit like saying they were e/r, on location, etc. Great, that is fine when it's quiet, in fact I love it, left overs from when I did Police.But NOT when it's insanely busy and the crews with huge jobs are trying to get a little air time. I got so pissed off I sent a general broadcast telling all the crews that just for tonight they can disregard telling me when they are e/r, on scene, sit reps and clearing unless it's an urgent job. I think they were all very relieved at that. Did autonatic acknowledgements as well which helps matters re air and phone as well. At the end of the shift i.e 3am, the storm had died down significantly enough that the only jobs coming through were cancellations. I matched them all up along with 2nd/3rd/4th calls and duplicated them so the screen was cleaner. Then at 2am Corio and Geelong sent in their pages and pages of job clears which was fantastic. South Barwon was the only crew still out there, and they were being backed up by about 4 other local crews. So when Rob came to relieve me at 3am, he only had the odd job on other crews plates (about 7 jobs scattered) and the South Barwon Millions as we came to call it. :-) I got a heart-felt thank you andjob well doen from Tim and the DO's of Corio, South Barwon and Geelong which made me feel all warm inside. Which was handy considering I had to ride home in the pouring rain with my jeans on! LOL!!!!!! Gee did I ride slow and careful! Well, that's 3 big storms I have worked now. That will do for a while, thanks! ;-) I wonder if we'll get a little plaque on our Wall of Honour for it? That would be cool! That would be 2 plaques that I was involved with. :-) Anyway, it's hot and humid today, going to go sit outside and pretend I'm in a tropical suana on holiday in some gorgious location far far away.