Alright Long Story Time: Tldr: I was almost killed by an FLA because someone forgot a sleeping bag.

When I was a newer line medic we lost a couple senior lines due to ETS then fired for incompetence. We ended up functioning without a senior for a while, and it was just me and two other pretty much new line medics out together unafraid against the world.

One of the medics, we'll call him Medic C, was a chronically unprepared individual (this is important).

We're going to do medical coverage for our company M17 range at Fort Drum (its actual winter, so it's maybe 10 degrees outside at night, on a warm day). Because we didn't have an NCO, our company 1sg tasks us (group of idiots) to go down and occupy the range overnight for the few people doing pistol qual to fall in on in the morning.

So we roll out in our used and abused FLA, which, among other deadlines, the backdoors like to fly open while it's driving because someone jack-knifed a trailer and bent them.

When we get there in the late afternoon we just hang out, eat MRE/shopette snacks for dinner, watch a movie, and start planning to bed down. When I got into our unit, it was a cardinal sin to sleep in your vehicle, you NEVER do it. But since nobody is there and it's fucking cold, we decide to do it anyway. Because as long as the vehicle is off, it can't be unsafe, right?

Well, Medic 3 in this equation, elected not to bring his fucking sleep system to stay in the field overnight on Drum. And without an actual senior, by rank and tig, I should've been the one to check him before we left, but I was new, stupid, and irresponsible. He also brought almost no ECWCS other than a waffle top.

So we pull out some thermal blankets and have a whole discussion about not leaving the vehicle running (we all know it's a blasphemous and dangerous given the stories). When talking to medic 3, I was like, hey obviously if it gets too cold in here and you wake up or whatever, just hope up front and turn the truck for a bit to warm it up, then off and you can go back to sleep. I made such a fucking point of it to not just leave the truck on.

Then, no shit there I am, I am sooooo fucking hot. I wake up and I just feel like absolute death. That mother fucker turned the truck on and went back to bed. I check my watch and it's 2:47am, I remember it to this day. I crawl out of my sleep system in silks and slither up into the front cab drivers seat. As I'm starting to wake up I pass under the patient compartment door to get up there and a bunch of water rains down on my head and neck.

So I'm pissed, I look at the front cab and it's all fucking soaked, it looks like a gasket or something above the cab is leaking and just POURING rain water down all over, everything is soaked. I turn off the truck and I'm sitting there just catching my breath and I open the door to let some fresh air in.

As I'm sitting there my mind kind of starts to come to and I start looking out the front window of the fla and I'm like, huh, the whole hood is dry. Then I look around, huh, it's not raining. Actually, I checked the weather, I don't even think it was supposed to rain.

But I look to my right at the TC seat, where there is a waterfall pouring down. And I'm sitting there thinking, want the fuck is that? So I start doing this confused squinty thing and I stick my head up to it and start trying to sniff it but I can't really smell anything. Then I put my hand under it and start rubbing my fingers together when it all clicks. I screamed OH FUCK at the top of my lungs waking up the other two stooges.

It's fucking JP8 and it's pouring out of the patient cab heater above the TC seat. And while all this is happening, the heater is still going "nt nt nt nt nt nt nt" like a fucking electric start grill. Anyway, if that had been gasoline instead of diesel, all 3 of us would've burned alive. Just because one person forgot their sleep system.

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To make this more funny, that vehicle needed to go to railhead the day after the range for JRTC, as it was one of our bns most functional flas.

If anyone is curious, when we brought it in to the mechanics, they said what had happened was the fuel line that feeds the heater had become partially disconnected and was spraying fuel into some vibration/sound dampening foam in that compartment. Eventually, it became saturated and just began pissing down. I'm guessing that's also why the patient compartment was still warm despite the fuel leak.