Minutes before, an alarm signal in a condominium laundry room had summoned the Asbury Park Fire Department to a multi-story building where firefighters found, not fire, but water - lots of it - pouring through the ceiling and splashing across the floor.

Rushing upstairs, and finding no building manager on-site, Captain John Kelly broke a lock on the vacant condo above the laundry room, where he discovered sopping hardwood floors and more water gushing from the ceiling and an overhead light fixture.

Another flight of stairs, another forced door lock, and firefighters found themselves wading through scalding water to locate the trouble - a broken hot-water pipe under a kitchen sink.

By the time I panted up two flights of stairs, firefighters had stopped the flow in the upper unit. A sweating Captain Kelly was mopping up buckets of steaming water while other firefighters tackled the first-floor deluge with towels from the ambulance - all before the building manager arrived.

As I described in last week's column, Asbury Park's Fire Department is all about expecting - and dealing with - the unexpected.

And, just as city firefighters conduct daily medical and rescue drills, they also practice skills ranging from raising ladders and operating power saws to stretching fire lines into high-rise buildings and maneuvering their unwieldy rigs.

Asbury Park owns (I should actually say "owned") a 20-year-old ladder truck and three fire engines. Two of the engines date from 1977 and 1993, and the third was purchased in 2000.

Days before I visited, the ladder truck suffered a major failure, and Fire Chief John Murphy deftly negotiated a contract for a used truck from Hoboken. During the anticipated three-year loan, Asbury Park will pay only the maintenance and insurance costs.

Murphy's ultimate dream is to purchase a new ladder truck and two new engines, and to keep one engine for back-up - a move that he believes will get the department through the next dozen years - but the anticipated $1.3 million price tag means that dream won't come true immediately.

As I watched the condo emergency call, Battalion Chief Kevin Keddy explained that the ladder truck typically arrives first and parks in front of the building. Ladder company members enter the building first - by force, if necessary - and assess the situation while the engine company secures and stretches the water lines. The ambulances pull in last.

Ladder company members also forge ahead looking for additional flames and possible victims, and rely heavily on a variety of ladders, ropes and clamps - including ingenious ladders that hook over a peaked roof or fold up vertically into a pole - to reach tough spots and escape safely.

In addition to established mutual aid procedures, Chief Murphy is actively negotiating extended interlocal agreements with other towns. Currently, for example, Neptune sends resources to confirmed Asbury Park fires, and Fort Monmouth's $3.5 million emergency management unit responds to hazardous material situations.

Back at the firehouse, Captain John Kelly gave me a guided tour of the ladder truck, starting with a collection of picks, axes, poles and hooks (that's hooks, as in the expression "hook and ladder") that ladder company personnel use to gain entry to a building and to search for hidden flames in walls, roofs and ceilings.

He also showed me a wide variety of tools whose use I'd rather not think about - including power saws for cutting metal and wood, and inflatable air bags that can lift a truck if someone is pinned beneath it.

There were giant exhaust fans, portable lights, a thermal imaging camera for seeing victims and hot spots through smoke, and damming tools to stop the flow of hazardous materials. And, of course, there was a Hurst tool, popularly known as the "jaws of life" - a piece of equipment that Kelly easily swung with one arm, but which took me considerable effort to lift.

Kelly demonstrated his firefighting uniform - including a padded jacket, pants, boots, hat, air mask and tank - and I realized that scalding water wasn't the only reason he was sweating that morning.

"What does that outfit weigh?" I asked.

"Oh, only about 80 pounds - unless it's wet," deadpanned Chief Murphy. "Then it weighs more."

"But how can firefighters see through those bulky air masks?" I wondered, continuing our Gracie Allen-George Burns exchange.

"They can't, but it doesn't matter - there's usually too much smoke to see anyway. Which is why we have that thermal imaging camera."

Which is also why fire departments put such emphasis on fire prevention.

Asbury Park's Fire Prevention Bureau - staffed by Fire Official Bob Abbott, Fire Inspector Garrett Giberson, and support inspector Tee Gates - inspects every city business annually, looking for such indicators as proper exit signs and smoke detectors, excess trash, and carbon monoxide problems.

High fire-risk businesses such as gas stations, car-repair shops, bars, hotels, and rooming houses are inspected more frequently. When it comes to fire safety, Abbott said he especially has no patience for illegal rooming houses, citing a recent case where 14 people were warehoused in a single-family home, including in the unfinished attic.

"What are the most frequent causes of fires?" I asked firefighters during the day. Their answers were consistent: Unattended candles. Unattended pots on the stove. Portable heating devices. Dried-out Christmas trees. Those ubiquitous brown extension cords. And, as several families tragically learned last month, children playing with matches.

How can you protect yourself? Install smoke detectors outside each sleeping area, Abbott advised, and put a carbon monoxide detector on each level of your home, close to the floor.

And never attempt to put a fire out yourself before calling the Fire Department, because every second counts. This is one city department that none of us want to see working to its full capacity.