Wednesday, March 10, 2010 I was detailed to an upper county station and assigned to ride the engine. A call came in for a field fire about 10 minutes from the station. The brush truck responded, with me riding on the right. Once we got there, we were directed by the farmer\'s family, to an area about a half a mile away from the road. When we got on scene, there was a utility truck fully envolved sitting right next to a pole. There were high tension power lines over head, coming from the power plant. There was mutual aid stations responding from a nearby county. They stretched hand lines, as did I and another firefighter. Myself and the other firefighter from my station had a really good angle on putting this fire out quickly. The mutual aid company was only hitting the side of the tool box area, doing absolutly nothing for the fire. So, my partner I and I hit this and had very good success putting the fire out. Little did we know that the power line we continued to cross over again and again, (at first we had STRONG impression it was connected to the spool on a truck on the high ground being dead)was VERY charged. When my partner hit the line with water, it lit up the night sky! The safety officer was there and ordered us to shut down and return to the top of the hill. He then told us there was no life safety and the fire was controlled, we should have let it go and get out of the "attack" mode mind set

LESSONS LEARNED: With that being said, I learned to look around, there was a reason the "other" county department was not doing anything. I was a victim of the type A personality that told me do something, don\'t stand there. GET OUT OF THE TUNNEL VISION OF PUTTING THE FIRE OUT, HURRY! I almost lost my life that day and I was in Iraq in my previous life, so death was a daily reality for me. Not that I live wreckless, but I had the hero complex and with my military background, it was telling me to attack.