Miles and Telaraj, what happened wasn't your fault.  You could not have
predicted that the cage would come unglued at that moment, and everyone
survived, so try not to beat yourself up, OK?  You personally would have
died had you made another attempt, not the from the actual heat but from
smoke and poison gas from burning synthetics.
 
Now, FMLers, it occurs to me that the only explanation for their survival
was that they were down low enough to avoid most of the smoke.  Ferrets
*can* suffer from smoke inhalation, but these guys came through just
fine...should everyone be floor-mounting their cages and putting flourescent
orange signs on top attached to the handles saying "Critters!  GRAB THIS
CAGE!" so firefighters operating in dark smoky conditions can find 'em?
Plus making sure sleeping quarters within the cages are down low?  Very few
people die in fires from actual heat; it's breathing that shuts down long
before that.  I am absolutely not passing out blame, but we've been given an
opportunity to learn that shouldn't be passed up.
 
Hmmm...I wonder if there's a market for Nomex sleepsacks?  I wonder what
refineries do with their old worn-out Nomex flamesuits, for that
matter...can you imagine telling firefighters that yes indeed there's a
chance the ferrets are still alive, they sleep in a fleece-lined nomex
sleeping bag!?
 
Jim March
 
 .------------------
 For a wild true story of crooked cops, stolen guns, perjury, fraud
 and false criminal charges, see http://www.infinex.com/~jmarch
[Posted in FML issue 2210]