It is often difficult to lay blame in emergencies. I understand the rules pertaining to returning to station after. I was driving an engine in a busy station and we got a call at 8 a.m. for a fire in a house 8 blocks away. We had one major intersection and the cars froze in place. I needed to turn right, but no room. We got 2 cars out of the way, I went over the curb, the sidewalk, and through a gas station. Dispatch said 3 people were trapped in the front bedroom, 2 children and a disabled woman who was stuck in the bedroom. She had a wheelchair outside the closed bedroom door. The kids had a misfortune with the stove, they were 7 and 9. All 3 were talking to dispatch as we cleared traffic and got there 1 minute later. We smashed the bedroom window with a ladder, got in and got them out. No fire in that room at all. All 3 were vital signs absent and dead. After that I drove lots faster for a long time. It gets into your head. Sometimes what you think is a false alarm turns nasty. Sometimes you get to a scene where someone says "my babies are trapped'. Turns out to be cats. Almost all my firefighter friends and I hated cats. People treat them like humans and yell at you when you decide not to get inside some 100 year old house with who knows how many false ceilings and walls. In 32 years I had one accident. Knocked down a 6 foot piece of fence, did no damage to the vehicle, and got a day off. That chief was 100 percent no behind the guys he said. Right. (Well now it's gals too.)

Crazy job, 90 percent boredom and 10 percent total mayhem. "Stay with the truck and the deck gun on the gas leak John, we are moving a 1/2 block away in case," says the Captain. Good feeling that. 20 below and climbing a ladder on a slate roof to ventilate. Falling through stairs into the burning basement. Gee I only did that 3 times.

On the other hand I learned a lot of cooking and bbq stuff. For the 1st 5 years do the dishes. Next you get to peel potatoes. Then you graduate to turning on the stove. Now the stoves are tied to the alarm system and the entire kitchen shuts down. Too many burned steaks, soups LOL. Now I see firefighters in the grocery store (they work 24 hour shifts), and I don't know most of them. The ones who know me say "Hi Chief", and start to tell some story to the rookie. Probably about me being sent to work at the country station with 60 runs a year and making a race course for the riding mower and getting caught with a patio table, stopwatch, lemonade and the bbq going, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, baseball cap, and sunglasses after disabling the speed control on the thing and the guys ran it in and out of the corn field. Another day off..LOL. We were a lot like watching M.A.S.H. Really really crazy.

John Conley
Musica est vita