My Legs Hurt Like Hell!

I became an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) in 1984. This was born out of responding to accident after accident, where they always needed just one more EMT, for just one more patient, and had to WAIT for just one more ambulance to respond in.

I was never the most studious person in the world when it came to my school studies. But, when it came to passing the EMT class, I was all about it. I recall sitting on the porch of our rental shore house in Avalon New Jersey, flipping through the pages of a text book riddled with disgusting photos of injuries, from minor to serious in nature. And this time, I was doing more than just looking at the pictures, I was actually studying the text about how to treat those pictured injuries. I studied harder for this class than any I had taken before graduating high school. And as a result, passed it the first time.

Soon, I was riding ambulance calls and helping save the lives of the sick and the injured. Since I scored really high on the Trauma sections of the class, I usually leaned toward the injured more than the sick. Soon after I received my certification, I obtained a fisherman's tackle box and converted it into a first aid kit with enough gauze to save lives at a school bus accident. The box was never far away, and usually stored in my trunk. Whenever I showed up at a call before an ambulance, I would leap from the car and whip out the box to help the nearest patient. Very doctor-like I must say, I was only missing the white coat.

One of these incidents occurred just before sunrise, some time in the four o'clock hour. When my fire pager went off, I was sound asleep in my Brookhaven home with only a few hours left before I had to get up for work.

"Station 50, Ambulance 69, Rescue 54... Rt 352 in the area of the Penn Dot shed, an auto accident reported with entrapment."

Within seconds, I was pulling on pants and sneakers and running for the door. Even in my early morning daze, I recognized the address as being close enough for me to respond directly to, instead of having to go to the firehouse and respond with the Rescue truck. I drove through the empty streets and saw only the reflection of my flashing blue light on the surrounding trees and buildings. Listening to the fire radio as I drove, I could tell I was the closest to the scene and nobody else was responding yet. As I pulled out onto the highway, I drove right into a fog. I saw nothing but the blue flash in front of my hood. I suddenly understood exactly how the accident occurred, zero visibility made it awfully difficult to get to the scene.

I travelled about a mile or so down the road when I noticed flashing lights on the opposite side of the four lane highway. I recognized it as the early morning trash collection crew, so I leaned into the accelerator again, disregarding the flashing lights. Fortunately, just as I passed by the trash truck, something behind the truck caught my eye. I slammed my brakes on and spun the car around to pull up behind the truck. My headlights finally illuminated the scene. Before me I made out the back end of a small red MG convertible which had buried itself under the back end of the larger trash truck.

I jumped out of my car, and in one swift fairly smooth motion, I popped the trunk, threw my firecoat on and grabbed the box I was so used to having with me on medical calls. I'm not sure who the man was, but as I was walking from my car to the trash truck, a man hurried back passing me as he spoke...

"That guy is in bad shape!" as he never even slowed down trying to get away from the scene.

Standing on the side of the truck were two guys wearing reflective vests, obviously workers from the trash company. As I walked closer to assess the scene, I saw a red sports car under the back of the truck, with the entire hood buried up to the windshield. I leaned down to speak to the injured driver and noticed his legs were pinned under his dashboard, and his face was bloodied. I opened the box and pulled out the penlight so I could look and see how bad his legs were injured. As I was beginning my patient care, the driver became insistant with me.

"Don't worry about me, check the guy in the truck!" I stood and looked up toward the front of the large garbage truck where the driver would have been.

"Sir, I really don't think he even felt you, he'll be okay..."

"No! Check the guy in the truck, really!" the severly injured driver became almost angry with me trying to disregard his requests.

Just as I was about to explain the difference in weight between a small sports car and the diesel trash truck, I heard an approaching siren. I stood up and stepped back away from the car and looked in each direction into the darkness. The next sight I saw will stay with me until I die. As I was glancing around the scene waiting for the approaching ambulance to arrive, my eyes caught a glimpse of blonde hair waving in the breeze. However, the hair I saw was in the back of the trash truck where all of the garbage is dumped. In other words, he was the "guy in the truck."

I stepped up and leaned into the back of the truck and saw a man lying on top of the garbage pile, face up. He looked over at me and almost nonchalantly said,

"Can you get me outta here, my legs hurt like hell!"

I looked at this man and scanned his body quickly to see if he was also injured, and discovered an incredible sight. The man's body stopped just below his waist. I looked closer to see if his legs were beneath the garbage pile, but they weren't. It suddenly became apparent that this man's legs were both amputated by the sports car as he was dumping a trash can into the back of the truck, and this was where he landed after the collision. The legs which "hurt like hell," were no longer attached.

I stepped back and turned to see the first ambulance pulling up next to the trash truck. The doors were barely opened when I shouted to them...

"Bilateral leg amputation, still in the truck, I need backboard and heavy duty bandages!" I climbed up on top of the car and stepped into the back of the truck to see how we could move this guy from the dirty position he was in. I pictured how infected his legs would get if he sat in this garbage any longer. Two more EMT's joined me at the back of the truck and started packing the leg wounds, and began trying to manuever the backboard under him so we could lift him out.

"Advise the rescue we do have entrapment in the car too...ask for a medic and additional ambulances...we will need the help!" As we worked quickly on the amputation patient, I didn't want to abandon the driver trapped in the car. The next unit to arrive was going to be assigned to his care and removal. For now, I had to prioritize. And, afterall, the driver did insist I check the "guy in the truck!"

Within minutes the scene was quite chaotic. We removed the man from the truck, which created quite an odd vision. We placed him on the stretcher but we couldn't help but notice he only took up half of the stretcher. The next thing we had to do was locate the legs and see if they could be saved. As the Rescue crew worked on lifting the dashboard from the driver's legs, we had other personnel climbing all over the truck, under the truck, next to the truck, under the bushes... we had no luck locating the missing limbs. It wasn't until the rescue crew extricated the driver, and pulled back away from the wreck that we decided the legs were under the car. One was partially intact, the second was too damaged for it to be used. We placed the limbs in bags and assigned another ambulance to transport the limbs to the trauma center in case there was any chance of reattaching the limbs.

Unfortunately, the limbs were too damaged, and the legs were too infected. The surgeons had to take both legs at mid-thigh and this trash collector ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. It turned out the driver of the sports car was driving home from a night shift, and dozed off behind the wheel. There were no skid marks found behind the truck. Apparently this car just drove right into the back of the truck without slowing down, and cut the garbage collector standing behind the truck in half. The driver of the car, as with most accident victims we care for, we never heard from or about again.

With all of the tools wrapped up and returned to the Rescue truck, and all patients transported to their respective hospitals, my work here was done. Within the hour, I was back in my warm bed, resetting my fire pager on the night stand...ready for the next run.

Sometimes You Have To Be Creative

This firehouse was unique in the way it covered two very different sections of the township. In the village the building was built in, and had since grown in, the majority of the residents were blue collar, low income, hard working people. Their small houses ranged from small single wood frame houses with no more than a one car space on the side of the road to park or some were twin homes with the wooden porch in front. The roads were narrow and filled more often than not with pick up trucks with gun racks and fishing rods mounted on them. The terrain was pulled right out of a mountain town with steep hills and bends with the houses positioned wherever they could build. The roads made it a challenge for fire apparatus to negotiate. We had to learn how to make tight turns, how to negotiate railroad underpasses on an S-bend, blind corners, steep hills and narrow bridges. Once you became an apparatus driver here, it was thought we could drive apparatus anywhere.

If you pulled out of the firehouse and turned right, travelling up the hill out of the village, within a minute you would be surrounded by large houses with two car garages, large front yards and driveways. The cars would often be washed in the driveways by the white collar owners over the weekend.

It was almost two different worlds.

This particular day we had been hanging out at the firehouse with really nothing going on short of planning dinner. Were we going to order pizza, were we going to Denny’s, going to the pizzeria…etc etc. We sat around the table in the game room throwing ideas out but nobody making a decision.

The tones hit and we were all caught off guard. Usually someone hears our neighboring township companies being dispatched and it will give us a little warning that we may be getting dispatched. This call happened to be outside the township, just over the line on the other side of the creek that meandered through the mills at the bottom of the hilly terrain.

With the sounding of the pagers and the firehouse siren winding up outside, we jumped from our seats and ran to our gear racks. I yanked on my sneakers, already untied in preparation for a fire call, and tossed them aside. I pulled the bunker pants out from under the hanging coat and helmet, pulled them up to my waist, grabbed the coat in one hand and the helmet in the other.

“What is it, anybody hear what it is!” I yelled over the engine starting and siren wailing.

“Mount Road for a house fire!” an anonymous voice replied.

As the loud siren outside wound down I yelled back to Rick,

“We have a crew let’s go!”

I didn’t want anyone to slow us down. We were within minutes reach of this address which meant we could be first in, even though it’s located in another township. This is equivalent to a team coming in to someone else’s field and beating them on their turf. The only obstacle we had to slow us down were the damned roads we had to take to get there.

Jumping up into the pack seat I pulled my coat on, pulled the chin strap tight on my helmet and looked over for Rick who was doing much of the same in the jump seat next to me. With each response we made together, it was an unwritten and unspoken truth that we may not come back, and that at some point my life may be in Rick’s hands, or his life in mine. We knew this as do most firefighters when they make responses into unknown, dark, hot situations. You just never know which call will be the last. You just watch each other’s back like they were family. Rick and I ran so much together as pack partners, I was perfectly comfortable knowing he was with me, the trust I had in him, unwavering.

With each turn and hill of the trip over the creek, Rick and I both tried to peek over the cab to see if we could find any signs of smoke or fire. Finally, as we got closer and closer, we both sat down in the seat and pulled on our air packs. If we did this too soon we wouldn’t be able to stand up and look for the column of smoke we had hoped for. We had both gotten skilled enough that we could wait until the last moment before throwing our air pack on, and still be ready to make the initial attack on the fire.

Our engine made the last turn on to Mount Road and the siren echoed off the rows of homes on both sides of the road. I looked out the side window and noticed the houses were crammed together with small alleys between them. The wood siding was bathed in red flashes from our lights as we raced by. I glanced back over the hose bed to see who was riding the tail board. I saw a helmet I recognized as Donna, my on and off girlfriend at the time, and one or two others. I thought to myself, hope this isn’t much or she would have to hook up to the hydrant to get us water. Donna had attended fire school, I just never thought of her as a “firefighter.” She was a “girlfriend.”

As we approached the block we were looking for the engine slowed. In the cab I could hear the radio blaring, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. It turned out an officer from the local company made it to the scene and requested our engine to lay a supply line from the hydrant into the front of the house. Our driver pulled just past the yellow hydrant on the side of the road, right in front of a small hillside church. A black wrought iron fence lined the front of the church, two stained glass doors were at the end of the short sidewalk, and a tall white steeple rose into the trees surrounding us. Before the guys on the back could wrap the hydrant, I looked up at the cross on the steeple and wondered if I needed to pray. Was someone trying to tell me something?

My thoughts were interrupted by a shout from the back of the truck.

“Go, Go!” a firefighter was waving us on after he had pulled a hose off the truck and wrapped it around the hydrant.

As we pulled away, almost one thousand feet of hose fell to the street off our hose bed all the way into the fire scene. The firefighters left at the hydrant would now have to quickly hook the hose up to the hydrant and feed us water at the scene before Rick and I pulled our hose line into the house and emptied the water tank on the engine. This is where teamwork comes into play. Everyone has a job, and everyone depends on someone else to get the job done.

As the engine came to a stop I noticed this house was built on a hillside, making the front door on the ground level, but the rear door was downstairs. One level on the front, two or more levels from behind. I could see and smell smoke coming from the lower level of the house as I stepped off the truck and pulled my air pack straps tighter.

By the time I got to the other side of the truck a hose was being pulled off and across the front porch. I threw my mask on quickly as I followed the hose to the front door. Rick was in front of me and once we pulled our gloves on, we gave each other the thumbs up, and we both grabbed the hose and crouched down low as we went in through the door. The officer behind us was yelling that the fire was in the basement. This I believed since we could barely see our hands in front of our faces through the smoke. No fire on the first floor, but it was floor to ceiling smoke, there was a great chance the fire was below us. To find the basement stairs we crawled along the outside of the room, feeling every nook and cranny until we found a door knob.

We slowly opened the door and found that it was the stairs leading to the basement. I pulled extra hose up behind us in preparation for the run down the stairs. Rick and I looked at each other and yelled through the plastic face pieces, “You ready?” “Yeah, no stopping, just keep going!” I pulled my eqar flaps down and the collar on my coat up, trying to cover as much of my skin as possible. It would still be a while before we got used to wearing those new nomex hoods. We were still using our earlobes as a thermometer, to determine whether or when to evacuate a building.

We knew we couldn’t be slow once we made the stairs. The staircase would act like a chimney where nothing but heat roared upward into the floors above. If we stopped for any reason it surely meant getting burned, or at least taking a lot of extreme heat.

Rick picked up the nozzle and when I gave the signal he dove into the heat. I humped the hoseline down to him as fast as I could so he didn’t get held up, then I followed behind him. When I cleared the stairs and reached the floor of the basement I could feel the temperature cool slightly. The air was clearer on the basement floor and we could make out a small path between piles of boxes, clothes, toys and everything else you could possibly toss into the basement. We made our way toward the back of the room where we suspected the fire to be burning. Both of us proceeded on our hands and knees, Rick still holding the nozzle, me still humping hose up behind us. We were only half way through the room when we found what we were looking for. Suddenly the end of the room in front of us lit up with bright red, orange and yellow. The change from the dark, gloomy, eerie gray smoke was almost welcomed. Not only did the flames light up the room, it became our first point of reference within this blackened room. But the welcome feeling didn’t last long. Not only did the flames shoot up to the ceiling in front of us, it quickly grew in size to start licking across the ceiling above our heads.

I instantly feared a condition called “flashover” when everything in the room reaches an ignition temperature and explodes into flames all at once. The hose in our hands was filled with water and tough to maneuver. I yelled and pointed for Rick to open the nozzle and hit the ceiling to knock down the flames, and cool down the temperature. If we could just drop the temperature at the ceiling we might be able to prevent the flashover I feared. Rick had been holding the nozzle in his hand while we crawled across the floor and ended up holding the hose too far up toward the nozzle to bend the hose back easily. I didn’t want to waste any time repositioning, still realizing the ceiling temperature wasn’t going to wait for us to get a better position. As a result, I wrapped my arms around Rick, still holding the nozzle, and leaned back, pulling Rick back on to my lap. This gave us a better angle to hit the ceiling, and Rick opened up shooting the cool water into the flames rolling above us.

Within seconds, the bright flames darkened back down, and retreated back to the floor level in front of us. I released Rick from my grip and he proceeded to go after the fire at our level, as I fed him some more hose. Within minutes, our low air alarms began ringing, advising us we only had a matter of minutes to get out of the building. By this time, other crews were arriving and were ready and eager to come inside and take over for us. By the time we decided to leave the basement, the fire was all but under control. For the fresh crews the job now was to ventilate and check for extension. Firefighters began filling this small house, inspecting all floors and rooms, and walls for any hidden fire.

Rick and I made our way to the basement exit door since our air bottles were almost empty. We needed to get out into fresh air as soon as possible. As we made our way out the side door, and up the hill to street level, we noticed the bustling scene looked a little different than when we arrived. Flashing lights bathed the surrounding trees in a red glow, a crowd had assembled across the street and a yellow hose wound its way from the back of our truck, down the street and just around the bend out of sight. I looked around for Donna and with no success, I figured she was still at the fire hydrant in front of that church.

It wasn’t long before Rick and I were out of our air packs and sitting on the back of the air bank, snickering to each other about our unique fire attack technique. The point was, however, we responded quickly, made a quick fire attack, knocked the fire down before it ever left the room where it started, and we lived to talk about it, with earlobes intact.

It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last…

A Lesson In Discipline

Like most weekends, our firehouse was filled with volunteers from Friday evening through Sunday morning. By 6:00pm Friday, the chalkboard in the radio room would have names scribbled on it with riding positions next to them. It was like a reservation list for the bunk room. When the list was filled, nobody else could spend the night.

It became a habit for me and Rick to sleep in each weekend. We both lived pretty far from the station and usually wouldn’t make a truck if we responded from home. Months went by with Rick and I spending the weekends there, which meant we did everything together while we were there. We ate breakfast, lunch and dinner together. We would go to the mall, watch TV and go to movies together. Most importantly, we would fight fires together.

Rick and I were always the first to sign up for the air pack seats on the first out engine. This would mean it would be us pulling off the first hose line and making the initial attack on any fire we responded to. We got to know each other’s moves, expectations, and abilities and limitations. The bond that was formed is one not easily broken, and it would last for me many years after our volunteer fire service careers.

As luck would have it, just after we all lay in our squeaky bunks, and the room would be dimly lit with only the voice of the fire dispatcher echoing from the room next door, we could almost predict a fire call, especially if we were all to get up for training early the next morning.

Usually it would happen as I had just rolled over and thought about the next day’s agenda. I would have to get up early, and drive all the way to Dover Delaware to attend the Delaware State Fire Academy. It would be one of many trips I would take to the academy to become certified in various courses. Sometimes Rick would attend with me, other times I would find myself in the back seat with three other firefighters all getting some training in over the weekend.

Our dispatch involved a two-tone alert followed by the dispatcher’s voice advising what company was due, what the address was and then the type of emergency, whether it be house fire, brush fire, car fire, vehicle accident, etc. Those of us who had been doing this for a while learned the tones for each firehouse, and would end up guessing what company was being dispatched just by the tones going out. Sometimes we would be right, other times we might be one or two numbers off. As the tones got higher, so did the number. Station 32 had lower tones than Station 59. After a while, we could tell by the first of the two tones if it might be us. In fact, usually my heart would become used to getting a jolt of adrenaline just after our tones went off, so even if I wasn’t paying attention, if our tones went off, my heart would jump.

As I lay staring into the darkness on my creaky bunk, I could hear the speaker from the next room. Sure enough, I recognized the first tone… then all hell broke loose. The second tone hit, beepers went off, lights blinked on and speakers blared. Of course all at once, all of our bunks squeaked to life as we all jumped up and headed for the apparatus bays. I was on auto pilot as I walked from the bunk room, through the TV room and stepped into the bays where our gear hung behind the apparatus. Rick was nearby pulling his bunkers on as I pulled mine from the rack. With just a glance at each other we both headed for the pumper, Rick walking up the passenger side as I walked up the driver’s side to the jump seats just behind the cab. I stepped up into the seat and stood buttoning my coat looking over at Rick doing the same on the opposite side. Behind us on the back step were two more guys, including Rick’s older brother Greg. Up front the Assistant Chief hopped into the driver seat since we didn’t have any other driver for the first-out engine, a position he really didn’t favor over riding the officer seat. Unfortunately for me, he would do anything he could to get out of driving.

“Is Pat here!” I heard a voice yelling over the noise of the bay door raising.

“Right here!” I yelled to nobody in particular as I fastened the last of the buttons.

The assistant opened the driver’s door and as he leapt out of the can he yelled back to the crew…

“Engine Two! Everybody switch over, taking engine two! Pat you drive!”

Part of me was let down, I was all geared for packing up and being on the attack line with Rick, again. But part of me also became anxiously excited, because I was driving! I had to switch gears from moving in auto pilot to actually thinking.

How do I start the truck, how do I shift the truck, how do I get to the scene, what was the fastest route, how do I position the truck, how do I pump the truck….????

I quickly unbuttoned my bulky coat and tossed it and my helmet back to the jump seat of Engine Two, where Greg had moved up to take my place as Rick’s partner. He would hold on to the bulky gear while I drove, and when we arrived I would have to put it back on. With a loud roar, I brought the engine to life, hit all the switches that bathed the firehouse walls in glowing red, and in seconds we emerged from the warm firehouse and pierced the cold night air.

I maneuvered the apparatus through the back streets, shifting as I climbed hills and rounded bends. With an old truck like this, the driver was tired by the time they arrived due to the double clutching and manual steering. It was always a joke throughout the station, that driving this engine was really driving an engine! The new apparatus with automatic transmissions and power steering provided little challenge to the driver. In the old days, the driver could work up a sweat just getting the crew to the scene.

I was almost relieved when I finally caught a glimpse of the street sign as the red lights flashed upon it and we turned on to the street we were looking for. I was proud of my performance to this point as well. I never missed a gear, didn’t stall the truck, kept it running at a good clip the entire way.

“Pull up just short of the fire and we’ll stretch a line from there…” the Assistant Chief finally spoke and it almost startled me. I was in a zone. The level of concentration to keep this truck moving up and down the hills was mentally tiring.

I stopped the apparatus, engaged the brake, put the truck into pump gear, and finally hopped out of the cab. As I walked down the side of the truck to get the wheel chock, my crew had already disembarked and was pulling their hose off the bed, almost ready for me to supply them the water for the attack.

“Charge the line as soon as you can!” somebody yelled back at me standing at the pump panel.

I stared up at the gauges and levers and buttons, trying my best to wake up and remember how I was taught to pump this truck. In my head I reviewed the procedure…

“Pump gear, open tank to pump, open discharge, throttle up, discharge pressure…”

I looked at the flat hose lying in the leaves next to the truck, and finally it began to fill and grow with water. Water I was pumping into it. The sound of the nozzle coughing open with water was a delightful, relieving sound to my ears. It really wasn’t until this point that I noticed the fire we were racing too was just a pile of leaves that were gathered against a huge tree. The flames had already consumed most of the leaf pile and were now racing up the center of this old hollow tree trunk. As I watched Rick and Greg wrestle the hose into position and flow water into the towering tree, I decided I could now take a minute and throw my coat and helmet on. I hopped up into the jump seat where Greg had ridden, but I didn’t see my coat. I walked around to the other side checking the seat Rick rode in, but again, no coat or helmet.

“Hey, where ya hiding my stuff?” I yelled up the line to Greg still backing Rick up on the hose line.

“Oh, we lost it back on Glen Riddle Road on that last bend!” Greg said as he adjusted his grip on the heavy hose.

I smiled, shook my head and returned to the pump panel.

Within the hour, I was out of water, the flames had subsided, maybe not out, but they weren’t going anywhere, and our hose was picked up and packed back on the truck. On the way back I slowed down to a crawl as we rounded the bends on Glen Riddle Road, hoping to recover my fallen gear. Unfortunately, nobody on my crew spotted the coat or helmet, so I returned to the station with only the bunker pants I was wearing.

While standing amongst the gear racks, Greg explained he was buttoning his collar when I rounded the last turn quickly and he wasn’t able to catch my coat sliding off the diamond plate. Again, I just shook my head, and thought how I would be getting a new coat and helmet once the officers came to the station in the morning.
After a few more post-fire discussions, the crew once again fell silent into our squeaky bunks. I quietly hoped we wouldn’t have any more fires until I got my own coat, or maybe we would have a rescue call where I would drive again, not requiring the full gear.

The pagers remained quiet for the rest of the morning and we all slept in a little late due to the early fire call. When I finally stirred, I could hear voices in the next room, and the light was shining in the bunk room from above the partition separating the bunk room from the pool room. I soon realized I was one of the last guys out of the bunk room so I decided to wander out into civilization. Unfortunately for me, the Fire Chief had arrived, and was not too happy about the lost gear from the overnight call.

“So what are you doing about the gear from last night?” he said as I walked into the radio room.

“We checked the area on the way back, I can go check again now that the sun is up I guess…” I replied nonchalantly.

“How did this happen?” the Chief asked almost angrily.

“Greg was holding it so I could drive, we rounded a bend and it slid off the truck before he could catch it…”

“So did you handle it with Greg?”

“Handle what? It was an accident…” I couldn’t believe he was actually mad like someone needed to be disciplined over this.

“Lieutenant, just because Greg is your friend doesn’t mean you don’t discipline him..”

“For what? What did he do exactly?” I didn’t even let him finish and I walked away as I saw Greg standing behind the apparatus.

“Greg, I am telling you now, next time you let gear slide off the truck by accident you will be in trouble…” I shook my finger at Greg and was loud enough for the Chief to hear. Greg smiled in response.

I walked away from Greg glancing back at the man in the radio room as I walked back into the TV room. I didn’t always agree with some of the Chief’s decisions or ideas, but this was ridiculous. It was clearly an accident, not anything that required any form of discipline.

The crew had been gathered in the TV room for just over an hour when there was a knock at the door.

“That’s us!”

“Still alarm!”

“Here we go!”

The room instantly filled with comments from the anxious firefighters laying around the furniture in a variety of contortions and shapes. The one thing we all had in common was the need to get back on the apparatus, race to another call and fight some fire or tool some cars apart.

A “still alarm” was when someone actually stopped at the firehouse to report a fire or car accident instead of calling 9-1-1 and having it dispatched. When a car pulled into the lot, the phone rang or someone knocked on the door, it would certainly spark a few firefighters up and someone would beg for a still alarm.

In this case, I didn’t move from my comfortable couch position, while at least two other guys jumped up to see what was going on at the door. I just didn’t see the need to crowd the door. If someone was reporting a fire, we would all know soon enough, until then, I waited inside.

I could tell by the tone of voices, this was no emergency being reported outside the door, and tried to get back into the television show we had been watching.

“Hey Lieutenant! Think this belongs to you?” one of the firefighters at the door returned to the TV room carrying a fire coat. This finally made me jump to my feet.

“Where was that?”

A female voice came from behind the firefighter holding my coat…

“Found it in my yard and brought it in my house, I figured it belonged here…”

What are the odds of a coat falling off a truck in the middle of the night, then the resident coming home at that hour to find it and keep it in her house? Apparently good on Glen Riddle Road. After thanking the resident for bringing the coat back, I couldn’t help but walk it past the radio room with a big smile.

“Chief, she found the coat in her yard last night and brought it back… imagine that!”

I turned to Greg standing a ways behind me... “…good thing nobody got in trouble.”

Injured and Trapped...How Embarasssing

Like clockwork, the pager went off just as we left our local and was driving across the neighboring township. But, as the rookie firefighters we were, Bill and I turned around and tried to make the truck from …well, too far.

As Bill negotiated the three point turn, I unraveled the cord around the teardrop blue light, plugged it in and threw it onto the roof of Bill’s small red Toyota, giving us the most Starsky and Hutch like feeling we had ever had. Bill had recently graduated from high school with me and eventually decided to join me in the volunteer fire service. It had only been a few weeks since his application was approved when we got this call.

I held the handle of the passenger door tightly as Bill sped off the main road onto a hilly back road, a shortcut we had gotten used to, to get to the firehouse. I was thinking ahead trying to give Bill tips about driving with a blue light on since this was his maiden blue light voyage. The words seem to fall on deaf ears as Bill just seemed to get faster and faster passing cars without hesitation.

We turned from Convent Road on to Red Hill Road, To our right was an open pasture with horses at the far end, bordered by a white wooden fence. To our left, woods. The road was only two lanes wide with a small yellow line in the middle. Just ahead was a sharp bend to the left….and we were approaching a car in front of us. I was more familiar with these roads than Bill since I had been using them to respond to calls much longer than him. I knew that just around the bend there would be a wider open area of road where we could get around this car with ease. I tried to tell Bill …

The words were completely formed in my head and were only beginning to emerge from my lips when it happened…

To my shock, Bill turned the wheel and moved the car into the oncoming lane just three car lengths away from the sharp blind bend. He accelerated enough to get by the slower car in front of us but, not fast enough to get back into our lane. Suddenly I saw headlights coming toward us. The mid afternoon sun was shining high above, but the large station wagon coming toward us in the same lane, had their high beams on. And in the next split second, we collided.

The next thing I remember was waking up in the passenger seat, Bill lying across my lap, my right arm searing with pain, and my vision blurred by the blood dripping down my face. I looked out the front windshield and realized we were now sitting in a field, down an embankment, but facing the road. At the top of the hill cars were stopping and people were making their way down the grassy hill to our car. I couldn’t move my right arm, and Bill was not answering my calls to wake up or to move off of me. The bystanders trying to help us weren’t able to open either door.

Things started becoming clearer to me. We had just been in an accident. We landed in a field off the road. Bill is unconscious and covered in blood. I am hurt, and apparently we are both trapped. The next thing I remember is waking up again, and there is a rescue truck parked at the top of the hill. I see George Baldwin, the old school Fire Chief walking through the grass toward the car wrapping a splint with gauze. I see John Richardson manhandling the large box containing a hydraulic tool kit which typically requires two men to carry. John picks it up by the two handles and carries it down the embankment by himself. I scan across the scene and then find Donna, my girlfriend at the time, sitting on the back of the rescue truck crying, being consoled by another firefighter. Each one of these observations added up to one thing in my mind, we were in a serious car accident and these guys were scared. And now, so was I.

I looked around the inside of the car and realized Bill’s legs were pinned under the left front side of the car which had been pushed in by the collision. Somehow he repositioned himself and was now lying between the two seats, with his legs still hidden under the metal. I was just able enough to reach out with my left arm to the button on the cassette deck to stop the Kansas music still playing. My right arm only moved above the elbow. I would try to reach for the door handle, and only the top part of my arm moved. My hand never left my lap. In front of the driver’s seat, the steering wheel was crushed and the windshield was shattered. My side of the windshield wasn’t broken. This made me feel a little better about my own condition, but I was extremely worried about Bill. He had only muttered a few words and lost consciousness again.

I watched as crews used the Jaws of Life on Bill’s side of the car. As happens in many accidents, the metal began pushing inward instead of out away from the patient.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” I yelled with all the strength I could muster. I could see the metal coming closer and closer to Bill’s legs from my side. Again, I lose consciousness.

The next time I wake up I am being wheeled along side the rescue truck on a stretcher. My right arm is wrapped up and feels like its tied to something like a splint. As we pass Donna she reaches out for my hand crying. We keep moving to the back of an ambulance parked nearby. After I am loaded into the ambulance I recognize the crew I am with. I knew Walt was driving and Joe was the EMT in the back with me. It was nice to have familiar faces along for the ride, but that didn’t matter for long.

The ambulance ride from the scene to the ER at Crozer Chester Medical Center was the longest ride of my life. It became very apparent that I had broken my right arm above the elbow. Because of this, I felt every crack in the road, every bump, every turn…

The excruciating pain of two bones rubbing together lasted for as long as the ride to the hospital. At one point I yelled to Joe,

“Tell him to slow the hell down!”

I was calmly advised by the helpless EMT that we were already crawling way under the speed limit. Still, the sharp pain ripped through me with every bump.

Inside the bustling Emergency Room, nurses and doctors swarmed around me. From all angles faces leered over me. I was moved into a bed from the stretcher and that was the last time I saw Joe and Walt. Suddenly, I was in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar faces. Although I was over 18, I called everything to a halt.

“I just don’t want anything to happen until my mom gets here…”

And they listened. The number of curious faces peering in at me dwindled. I was left with a few regular faces still trying to convince me they should start treating me. The second thing I wanted to hear was about Bill.

“I need to know how Bill is…the other guy in the accident.” I explained to many nurses. They politely tried to explain that he would be fine, and that he wasn’t brought in to the same ER.

“Well before anyone does anything to me I want to hear how Bill is.” I insisted.

Shortly after, my mother and brother appeared in my room.

“Mom, find out how Bill is, he’s really bad…bleeding a lot!” she grabbed my hand trying to calm me. “He’s really bad mom…” I began to tear up.

Gradually I allowed the nurses to take care of whatever they thought I needed done. One by one they would come into the room with bandages, gauze and one actually came in with a syringe of some sort. I made it clear that I did not want any needles, the true wimp through and through. They were trying to numb me up for the seting of the right arm. The nurse listened to my protests then winked at my mother…

“We’ll start without the needle and when you feel the pain you’ll ask for it.”

The procedure went without a hitch. The arm was broken in two places, and the doctor set it beautifully, and without pain meds. In fact, the ant-needle order had spread through the ER and when it was time to give me a tetanus shot, the nurse actually snuck in behind the curtain behind me, quickly wiped my upper arm with an alcohol swab and stuck me before I could even tell what was happening. I had become victim to a cleverly planned sneaky drive-by sticking. And my mother, she just smiled.

I continued to ask about Bill and it was some time before the word finally reached me. Bill had been transported to a different hospital, and to me that was very confusing. I was the one at the trauma center, and he went to a different non-trauma emergency room? He was the one with blood all over him and unconscious in the care when I left him. I didn’t understand.

My mother left the room and returned in a few minutes with more of an update from the other hospital.

“Pat, Bill is at Riddle Hospital, and he has a broken leg, he is going to be fine.”

Again, my mind raced. I could still see him lying covered in blood and not responding to my calls. How could this be? When I asked about the blood he was losing, my mother added calmly…

“The only cut Bill has is a small one on his back, other than that he wasn’t bleeding Patrick. The blood you saw was yours…”

The words travelled in one ear and somehow banged around inside my head for what seemed like forever. Finally, it all made sense. Bill was lying on my lap, my head and face was bleeding so much it covered Bill who was below me. It suddenly clicked.

Then one last thought ran through my head before the pace picked up…

“Well if I am that bad, what are you people waiting for? Fix me up! I’m bleeding here!”

Fire at The State Police Barracks

One thing we were always good for was trying to figure out different ways of training. When a few of us would be bored sitting around the station, and the pinball machine was all played out, someone would suggest going out on the apparatus and flowing water, or hitting a hydrant, or laddering a building.

It was one of those days when a group of us came up with an idea to take an engine up to the abandoned State Police Barracks on Route 1 for some practice with ladders and maybe some forcible entry. The building had been donated to the township fore companies for training after the State Police relocated. After a phone call to the Fire Chief, permission was given to go and practice anything that didn’t involve live fire. This meant we could use ladders, axes, remove doors and saw holes in the roof. The Chief just didn’t want us to use fire with such a limited amount of people going.

Well, that was good enough for us. As long as we got out of the firehouse and did some training, we were happy. Under the direction of Bart, the apparatus driver, who happened to be a former chief officer, we piled on the pumper and held tight as we made our way to the old police barracks.

Once we arrived in the old stone driveway, I joined the crew as we walked through the building. It was a large three story stone house which had been renovated several times, the last being into a Police Barracks. Still new to all this, my eyes widened as we walked from room to room, following Bart as he narrated the tour and explained what we could do and not do.

Back outside we pulled our gear on, coats, boots, helmets and gloves. I was teamed up with a more experienced partner and I followed him around the truck looking for tools we could use. Bart and another firefighter disappeared around the front of the building as I followed my partner inside the back door.

We practiced a few times forcing entry into closet doors, bedroom doors, opening walls up …and everything else we could think of to do with axes, pry bars and halligan bars. We covered the entire first floor while another crew took care of the second floor. Once we exhausted all of our possibilities, we were back outside sitting on the back step of the truck….disappointed that we were already done.

“Hey. Let’s go!” a voice could be heard over the sound of the engine. “Let’s go we have smoke showing!”

In unison, we stood up and turned back toward the building where Bart was walking off the porch waving for us to come toward him.

“Get a crew geared up, stretch a line, let’s go!” Most of us were rookies and instantly felt like the three stooges meeting the keystone cops. I ran to the jumpseat I rode up on and pulled the air pack out of the seat, grabbed the mask hanging above it and walked to the back of the engine. I swung the tank across my shoulder and quickly thought about how to strap it on, and connect the air mask, just like I had been taught not long ago.

I looked up at the side door and saw dark smoke floating out a cross the top of the doorway, and sliding up the side of the building. Questions about how and why this was happening never entered my mind, just what I was going to have to do to put this fire out.

I looked down the side of the engine and someone had already pulled the hoseline off, and stretched it to the stairs to the porch. I pulled my mask and gloves on and grabbed onto the hose line just as the driver started pumping water through it. My partner and I, now instinctively crawling across the porch and in to the darkened door, pulled the hose into the building under close supervision.

It didn’t take long for us to follow the smoke to a small closet on the first floor, where a small fire was started in a drum and was just beginning to lick up the closet walls. We knocked the fire down quickly and then turned to the lessons we just learned about pulling walls checking for hidden fire. Axes and other tools were passed into us from outside and we began opening up.

“Fire on the second floor! Back up crew go!” I turned back and saw firefighters masked up and crawling past us to the staircase to the second floor. The crew disappeared from sight as they ascended into a cloud of smoke on the stairs.

We finished up our overhaul and pulled our hoseline out of the first floor. Once outside, we dropped our airpacks, pulled off our coats and helmets and began wrapping up and packing hose. Soon after, the back up crew came out and joined us cleaning up the equipment. The leaders of this group were smiling and talking quiet then joined us.

“Now listen, as you know we were not allowed to burn up here,” Bart began to explain. “These little fires were done just to give you a taste, but lets not tell anyone this happened, or we all get in trouble.”

We all nodded in agreement. What happened at the police barracks, stayed at the police barracks.

An hour later, we were all back at the station hanging gear up, wiping off the tools. It wasn’t long before I was taking my usual walk around to the side of the firehouse and back to the house up the street where my girlfriend lived. I was looking forward to hanging out with her and watching some TV before taking the long drive home. Unfortunately, my night wouldn’t go that way.

Within one hour of returning from the abandoned barracks building, the pager on my hip beeped again…

“Station 69, Station 54, Station 50, Snorkel 23, Baltimore Pike and Valley Road, at the old Pennsylvania State Police Barracks, Middletown Township, a building fire…”
My heart skipped a few beats as I leaped from the couch and ran as fast as I could toward the firehouse less than a block away. My mind was racing with thoughts of us being responsible for the fire we were being dispatched to.

As I ran around to the front of the station, under the wailing firehouse siren, I noticed other volunteers pulling into the parking lot. I quickly pulled my shoes off and began slipping into the fire boots hanging below my gear.

“Hey we were just up there training!” I yelled over to another guy gearing up. Within minutes, our crew was back on the engine, this time responding with lights and sirens blaring. I strained to hear the radio over the siren but could only tell other apparatus were also responding, and would probably beat us there.

The report of the first-in unit was “smoke showing,” something I didn’t really want to hear. Then all of a sudden our truck went silent. The lights were off and the siren wound slowly until silent. This meant the people on the scene advised it was something small enough for them to handle and we could either return, or proceed into the scene at a reduced speed, as in normal flow of traffic.

From the back step, I strained to look up over the cab of the truck to see what they had. Our truck turned into the side street and stopped. In the front yard already was our Chief. That was a scary sight. Minutes later, our crew was requested to report to the front yard of the building.

I walked up with the group and noticed the engine from Station 69 in the driveway, and a hoseline pulled into the side door. The smoke was no longer visible and it didn’t look like a serious fire, fortunately.

“Who was on the training crew!” The chief’s voice snapped me back to attention as I got closer. Several of us raised our hands. “Get packing! 69’s crew doesn’t touch a thing, I want all of you to pack their equipment, got it!”

If that was all we had for punishment we would have been okay, however, the radio suddenly erupted in activity.

“Hey did you hear that?” a voice yelled from behind the apparatus. “50 just wrecked on the way up here!” Apparently, apparatus from Station 50 responding to the Police Barracks, struck a vehicle while going through an intersection. Fortunately there were no injuries, but we did have to loan them a spare siren which was damaged in the collision.

Needless to say, the lecture we received upon our return to the firehouse was quite long, loud and most of the words the angered Chief used can’t be repeated in mixed company.

We're Responding to A What?

There has been a laundry list of unusual calls, as you will find at any firehouse, but we always thought we caught the best ones. Sometimes they would start small, and gradually grow into the most intense incident you have had in a while, and sometimes they just started out strange, and remained unusual throughout.

For example, myself, and two other volunteers with no lives, were hanging at the firehouse, pushing pool balls around the table until late in the night. The only light on in the entire station was the one over the pool table. Suddenly, dispatch broke the night time quiet, and our pagers began to beep. Knowing we were the only three at the station, we didn’t run immediately, we all just paused from our play, and turned an ear toward the radio…

“Station 54, Lenni Road at the railroad crossing….”

The next few words were muffled on my pager. It sounded to me like the dispatcher had said, “10-81.” That was a ten-code for “DOA.”

The three of us dropped our pool cues and walked quickly toward the apparatus bays.

“10-81? Why are we going to a 10-81?” I yelled over the firehouse siren beginning to wind up outside. My curiosity fell on deaf ears, as we all began pulling on our fire gear.

Soon, the siren stopped wailing, and we had the bay doors open. The three of us stood under the door waiting for others to arrive for the call. For a moment, it seemed like it hadn’t happened. The chilly night air was quiet, the radio was quiet, and the road was empty. Finally, I could see headlights coming up the road and over the hill toward us; Then another, and another, all converging on our parking lot.

“What are we taking?” I yelled to one of the guys arriving.

“We have drivers for both the rescue and the engine, we’ll roll both…” he yelled back as he ran to the back of the bays to his gear rack.

I thought to myself, why take two fire trucks to a DOA, but who was I? I was the newest member and wasn’t about to ask questions.

Just then one of the arriving volunteers ran in yelling to nobody in particular, “What the hell do we take to a train derailment!”

Some of us piled on the rescue truck, and some jumped on the engine. The apparatus pulled out into the quiet night and began rolling up over the hill of Lenni Road. The loud engines roared disturbing the silent night we had just witnessed moments before. This would be a short ride however, just around the bend and down the hill to the railroad crossing. I began wondering, did they find a body on the tracks? Did a train hit somebody? Why didn’t they dispatch an ambulance if that was the case? My mind raced with anticipation until we began slowing down at the peak of the hill.



The rescue truck slowed almost to a stop, and I peered up between shoulders and looked out the front window. The scene was straight out of a made up disaster in my childhood backyard. In the darkness, and with the help of bystander headlights, several freight cars could bee seen lying on their side, across the street and their loads of stone dumped into neighboring yards.

“Oh shit! What the hell are we doing for this!” Voices began exclaiming their excitement and the radio began squawking with various voices requesting other resources. Our driver slowly proceeded down the hill careful not to hit any of the growing group of onlookers woken from their sleep by the wreckage.

As we got closer the train cars got larger and larger. It looked like an enlarged version of Christmas morning under the tree. For the next several hours we walked along the long line of toppled freight cars securing the scene and making sure nothing was leaking or smoking. It became an all night mission of securing the scene, keeping bystanders away from the toppled train cars, spitting coffee grounds out from poorly made coffee, and trying to stay awake.

Hours into the night a State Police car arrived at the crossing with a passenger in the back seat. It was the engineer of the train. Apparently the engineer was passing through this area on his way from the nearby quarry when he lost his load of some twenty rail cars most filled with stone. The engineer didn’t stop until he arrived at the rail yard several miles away, without most of his load.

Hours passed before we were released by Penn Dot and some highway workers. They officially closed the road and detoured traffic around the derailment. With no real fire hazards present we reduced our manpower to those who could hang around and keep bystanders away from the toppled train cars. By sun up, it was turned over to the railroad company and we were back at the firehouse, shaking our heads with amazement. The road would be closed for several days while the rail cars were cleaned up and the crossing repaired.

And so, what I thought was a medical emergency at the railroad crossing, turned out to be the first of many unusual calls I have had the pleasure of responding to over the years.

First-In on The Building Fire

It was a garage we had driven past almost daily. Not far from the firehouse, and set back in the woods at the top of a narrow driveway. We never really took notice to the garage but suddenly it would become a landmark to those firefighters responding to the call.

It was a late afternoon and the call took us by surprise. We had been just relaxing killing some time around the station, and planning our evening activities when the pagers went off. The few of us in the crew room immediately leapt to our feet and ran for the door leading to the gear racks. Voices shouted to each other over the firehouse siren wailing outside.

“What’s the address?”

“Is that ours?’

“We are assisting 71!”

Any time we had a call voices would yell over the blaring siren trying to get any detail we could about the call we were about to face. They say firefighters aren’t afraid of fire, but it sure seemed like it was nervous energy being released with all the persistent questions about the calls we went on.

One or two more volunteers pulled in for the call before we rolled out the large bay doors. I was in the pack seat behind the driver and my partner for the call was Wayne, in the pack seat behind the officer.

Our ride would only last a few minutes because the address was on the same street as the firehouse. The dispatcher had announced the address and advised it was a reported garage fire. This created images of a garage with cars in it, attached to a house, like a lot of large houses in the area. As the engine roared up over the hill and around the bend, Wayne and I both stood up in the open seats and peeked up over the top of the cab, scanning the sky for signs of smoke.

Responding to calls became an art of balance as the truck raced through streets, you were still buttoning your coat or pulling your helmet strap tighter, and strapping on the air pack. All this was being done on the outside of the apparatus in those days. We always had one hand tightly on a hand rail somewhere while the other one completed the task. Some days you would be on the back step trying to button your coat or pull up your boots. Other days you were lucky enough to ride in a seat and felt a little bit safer on the way to the scene. Nine times out of ten, even though seats were provided, we would find ourselves standing, trying to get the first look at the approaching fire scene.

“Hey you ready?” Wayne yelled over the engine cow to me as the siren wound down.

I nodded back to him as I pulled the straps tighter on my air pack. Wayne reached over and gave me a high five, obviously pumped up for the possible fire fight.
As we rounded the last bend, we saw another engine approaching from the opposite direction from the neighboring department. We met at the end of the driveway we were both searching for. The driver of the other engine waved us into the driveway first, but we still couldn’t see much, our view being blocked by so many trees.

Our driver pointed our truck into the narrow driveway and slowly made his way through the trees. My heart raced as I realized we were now the first truck to arrive and would be the first guys inside if we actually had something burning. Seconds seemed like hours, but when the truck finally reached the clearing at the top of the driveway, the garage came into view. It was a large two story four car garage, with a wood shop on the second floor. At first I was relieved that nothing seemed to be burning, but that changed suddenly.

Our apparatus pulled up to the right of the building leaving room for other trucks if needed.

“Back there!” Wayne yelled to me pointing to the rear of the building.

I looked back down the side of the large garage and saw what appeared to be brownish smoke wafting up into the trees. From inside the front door came a fire officer from the neighboring company.

“Get me an attack line right through here into the second floor, looks like it’s toward the rear up there…” the officer yelled at nobody in particular.

I stepped off the truck and reached up through the loops of the preconnected hose. I pulled the hose off the truck and began to walk it out toward the front door. Wayne quickly joined me at the doorway pulling on his air mask as I pulled on my gloves. I quickly walked through the door searching for access to the second floor, making it half the length of the long garage before realizing the stairs were just inside the door.

Wayne and I humped the hose in through the door and up the wooden staircase. Once upstairs the visibility became zero with thick black smoke. I followed closely behind Wayne, crawling on our knees trying to make our way back to the seat of the fire. We followed what felt like a narrow aisle between furniture and bookcases and other unidentifiable objects. Suddenly, our progress stopped, but I could feel the heat searing my ear lobes just below my helmet.

“Dead end!” Wayne yelled through his mask to me. I felt to my left and right and couldn’t tell what it was but we were suddenly boxed in. The only way to go was straight back behind us, the same way we came in. The darkness seemed to get thicker if anything, and before I had a chance to turn around, Wayne stood up in front of me. I glanced up over his shoulder and saw the entire opposite end of the garage engulfed in flames, and with little warning, began rolling across the ceiling toward us. With a few seconds of light from the flames, I noticed we had crawled into a dead end of filing cabinets, cut off from trying to advance further into the building.

“Stay down!” I yelled to Wayne as I pulled on his coat to get him back down to the floor. Just as Wayne fell, the entire ceiling above us flashed, bathing us in a hot glow, and forcing me to lay on the ground to escape the heat.

“Hit the ceiling!” I yelled for Wayne to open the nozzle and start knocking down the fire which had now taken hold of most of the second floor. Behind me I could hear muffled voices yelling through the smoke.

“You guys okay up there?”

“Yeah we’re good, get us another line!” I yelled back into the darkness as Wayne began flowing water at the ceiling. Soon we were joined by another crew with another hose line. Together we began making progress against the flames. While the nozzlemen directed their streams into the heart of the fire, other firefighters began moving the obstacles in our way, making a path straight to the back of the building.

Soon, the bells on our airpacks began ringing; warning us our air supply was dwindling. Wayne and I dropped the hose line and told the other crew we were backing out. We followed the hoseline from the second floor back to the wooden staircase, then to the first floor and outside into the cool fresh air. Smoke and steam wafted from our hot gear making it look like we were on fire. Firefighters standing outside came to us to help us out of our drained air bottles.

“Dammit that’s hot!” one firefighter said trying to release my bottle without using gloves.

“Hell yeah its hot up there, it rolled across the ceiling right above us.”

Wayne sat on the front bumper of the engine and began pulling his gear off next to me. Piece by piece, his gear started piling up on the driveway.

“Little warm up there Wayne?” a junior firefighter had picked up Wayne’s yellow helmet, the face shield and top of his helmet was distorted and melted from the intense heat we had encountered inside the garage.

“Oh shit!” Wayne exclaimed as he first noticed the damaged helmet he had been wearing just minutes before. I quickly grabbed my helmet and saw that it had escaped any damages. It was a reminder for both of us just how important wearing the gear and wearing it correctly is when the heat is on. Without the helmet and hood, we would have surely been burned when the flames flashed across the ceiling above us.

It wasn’t long before the fire had been knocked down and we started our cleanup. Pulses calmed, breathing settled. Muscles began to ache. Walking down the narrow driveway together, Wayne and I just shook our heads and smiled at each other, realizing what a close call we had just survived.

First Fire Fatality

When the pager went off I was sound asleep. Within seconds I was out of bed, pulling pants on, which were precisely laid out on the floor the night before, and running for the car. The midnight roads were mostly deserted, until I got close to the scene of the fire. My route to the fire house would lead me right past the fire, in fact it seemed a little too close to the fire at the time.

I turned the last corner and headed up the hill past what used to be the Glen Riddle train station. As my car began to cross the bridge over the railroad tracks, a blast of heat smacked me in the side of the face. Flames were pouring from the windows of the old brick train station, and instinctively, my right foot leaned into the accelerator just a little bit more.

A block later I could see the flashing red lights of the first engine cresting the hill, and the siren slowly winding down. I never slowed down. I was heading straight into the firehouse at full speed, and fortunately, other volunteers were arriving with me. Once at the firehouse I could hear the radio crackling with action from our first engine talking to other responding apparatus.

An assisting company’s fire chief had stopped at the scene and reported a building well involved with possible entrapment. For a moment I thought about what he had reported. Why would there be anyone at the train station at this hour of the night, why would there be entrapment?

My thoughts were fleeting as we threw our gear on and leaped on to the next responding apparatus. We were given orders to assist with an additional hose line off to the rear of the building. With the amount of fire in the building, we were not about to go inside and we had to plan for an outside fire attack.

As we approached the scene, again I could feel the heat protruding from the billowing flames and smoke. Voices of the officers were heard shouting over approaching sirens and roaring engines. We quickly found out there was an apartment above the train station, and the old postmaster’s wife still lived there. I stared up into the windows of the old building and saw nothing but red, orange, yellow and black from the blaze. Someone was up there…I kept thinking. My thoughts were quickly interrupted by someone shouting orders.

Soon I was humping hose from the engines parked in the street, down the driveway and into the parking lot behind the historic building. As we pulled the heavy hose closer to the burning building, I had to turn my face away from the searing heat. We were to set up a hose line in position to flow water into one of the second floor windows. Two of us were back there pulling line, yelling for more line, looping the line into position. We readied ourselves for water and gave the signal to charge the line. Soon, the long, flat, fire hose rose up off the pavement and I could see the water rushing toward the nozzle I had a tight grip on. I waited until I could feel the weight of the water before I pulled back on the lever that opened the nozzle. With a loud rush of air, I pulled back and suddenly water poured out of the large nozzle I had supported between my arms. I leaned to one side so I could see where the water stream was flowing. I pulled the nozzle to the right and watched as the heavy stream of water arched right into the second floor window. Soon what was bright with yellow and orange and reds, was darkened down to grayish smoke, but the flames didn’t stop. Behind the smoke, I could still see flames rolling across the ceiling.

Behind me, my partner leaned into me, helping support the weight of the pressurized hoseline. After a while, the hose line was shut down, repositioned and my partner and I switched positions. After several hose lines were placed in service, the flames began to die down. It was a definite sign that we were making progress.

The Captain walked around the corner of the building waving to us.

“Shut down! We’re moving inside!” he shouted to us.

The flames had been knocked down enough now that it was possible to make it inside and start fighting the interior flames. I pushed hard on the bale and the hose jerked to a sudden stop. Again we drug the heavy, now water-filled hose, close to the smoking building. Just in front of us was a large opening which used to be sliding glass doors. The glass from the doors had been shattered from the intense heat and I was now stepping on the pieces all over the blacktop, trying to keep my footing.

“Take it up here and start flowing inside this room.” the Captain shouted pointing to the gaping hole in the side of the building.

My partner and I regained our balance and hold on the line and again I opened up. Water rushed out and began darkening the glowing blaze inside the first floor. We continued this operation for a while, occasionally moving the nozzle back and forth trying to cover everything that was burning inside. We edged closer and closer, trying get as near to the flames ass possible without actually going inside where there was the danger of collapse from the burning second floor.

Suddenly, with little warning, a loud crack, and a whoosh of debris, air, smoke, and debris showered just a few feet in front of me. The second floor had suddenly dropped into the first floor right in front of my face. Debris actually struck my helmet on the way down, but fortunately we never got all the way into the building.

With a gaping hole above us now, the oxygen fed flames erupted stronger once again. And once again, we flowed water right back at it. Other hose lines joined us from the front of the building and we could see through the smoke that there was also a ladder truck up in the air flowing down from above. If nothing else, we knew the meaning of surround and drown, and we did it well…for hours.

Once again, the flames eventually darkened down, and the smoke started to lighten. Soon we had lights set up and we could see what was inside burning.

I pointed a light in through the smoking debris trying to recognize what things were. I could see a chair, pieces of bed, a shattered mirror, clothes…

Suddenly my eyes fixed upon a sight I will never forget. Among the pieces of bed I could see the charred remains of a person lying in the debris. The flames caused so much damage it was difficult to distinguish between trash and the person. I could see how the fire charred the skin, and in many places it was charred to the bone. I immediately thought I was looking at a large amount of barbecued chicken. I took a step back and motioned to the Captain nearby.

Apparently, the body I found, fell from the second floor apartment when the floor gave way. The bed all around her meant she was probably sleeping when the fire started. The Captain came over to us and peered through the smoke at what we had found. Within seconds, he had walked away from us and was last seen bending over in a wooded area adjacent to the driveway. I was glad to see the feelings I was experiencing at the time, may have been okay and possibly normal. I thought to myself, “If the Captain was getting sick over what we saw after all these years he had in the fire service, then I certainly can!”

Unfortunately for me, I will never forget the sight of the charred body lying just feet away from me. The fact that it so closely resembled barbecued chicken has resulted in me never eating chicken again...ever.

I Fell For Her When She Fell Into Me

I had been a firefighter now for about a month. Those routine trips with Bill from the college to the firehouse still occurred just about daily. At some point in the semester, we decided to see how many firehouses we could find. Out of all of the firehouses in the county…..well, we found them all. Some how, class didn’t mean much to us but finding firehouses did. In the end, my class grades would reflect this poor decision making as well.

It was a cold morning in March when we raced into the school parking lot amidst the wave of students’ cars pulling in at the last minute. The scene appeared to be almost choreographed as one car would pull into the left space then the right, then the left then the right. Students with back packs would emerge one by one, and walk quickly toward the stairs leading from the lot to the main entrance to the school.

Bill had just placed his car into a space when the pager on his hip came to life.

“Station 54, 69, 50…. To the rear of Lenni Products, Lenni Road, Middletown Township, a house…”

Bill and I looked at each other and we knew we were going. Like salmon swimming upstream, Bill pulled out and drove toward the exit through the wave of cars coming into the school lot. As we pulled out on to the street I reached back and fastened my seat belt ready for a long but quick ride to the firehouse. The scanner under Bill’s dashboard squawked with voices from the dispatcher as well as apparatus responding. One of the voices clearly stated they could see smoke from the firehouse. With this update, Bill leaned on the accelerator just a bit more.

My heart again pounded with excitement. By this time I had been on several calls, but none turned out to be anything much. I hadn’t seen flames, not much smoke and the accidents were all minor. By the way it sounded on the scanner, this was going to be my first real house fire, and I couldn’t wait.

Bill explained on our way that the fire location was almost across the street from the firehouse. That being the case, we would not be able to drive down to the firehouse our normal way, and may even have to stop and run part of the way if the apparatus is blocking the road. Bill then navigated his car through a neighborhood that sits adjacent to the firehouse, emerging at the rear of the building. He quickly parked in a driveway that led to the kitchen upstairs, and leaped from the car, me trying to keep up.

We ran around the side of the building into the front lot and the scene was suddenly laid out in front of me. A pumper from a neighboring company was parked at the fire hydrant in front of our station; a long white hose ran from that truck down the middle of the street and into a driveway, disappearing behind some trees. An ambulance was parked in our parking lot, medical equipment piled on a stretcher awaiting potential patients.
“Grab your gear and we’ll go over!” Bill’s voice snapped me back to reality as we ran into the empty apparatus bays. Shoes were scattered about under the empty gear racks, and soon our shoes were thrown there as well.

The two of us scurried across the parking lot and followed the fire hose in the street. The house in question was an old small shack surrounded by woods preventing the sight of smoke or any signs of fire from the street. As we made our way into the driveway more fire apparatus came into view. Apparatus from our company as well as others had filled the top of the driveway, each stripped of equipment to help fight the fire. I followed Bill through the chaotic scene until we stood outside the smoking building.

“Here, take this inside…” a firefighter obviously exhausted from the fight, handed me a pike pole as he walked out of the building and back to the apparatus. Bill motioned for me to follow and we stepped through the charred doorway into an entirely charred room.

I had heard stories about the damage fire can do to a house, but it didn’t compare to the sight I was taking in at this point. Furniture reduced to ashes in some places, melted in others. Charred debris seemed to pile up across the floor, making my walking very difficult. Bill and I were told to pull the ceiling area down to see if there was any fire hidden behind the ceiling or walls. Bill began pulling with a tool he found nearby and then I started my first overhaul of my career.

As I made my way across the ceiling, poking holes and ripping drywall down to the ground, I realized there was much more to “firefighting” than I thought. Who knew I would be standing in charred rubble wrecking the ceiling of someone’s house, all in the name of firefighting. In the rooms toward the back, I could see firefighters squirting hoses up toward the ceiling hitting hot spots. A smoky haze rose from the debris making my eyes water as we worked on destroying the walls of the house.

Looking outside through soot stained windows, I could see the chief and a few other firefighters discussing what they were going to do next, pointing in various directions. Fresh crews were being gathered to relieve those who were working since the beginning. Bill and I would be left inside since we were late arriving.

Crews brought in lights to illuminate the darkened interior of the small house. Square lights were mounted on tripods and situated wherever they could find a clear or flat area on the floor.

“More line!” a voice shouted from the back room. A fire hose was buried under our feet in the debris making it difficult to pull it into the rear bedrooms where the hot spots were located. We picked it up and helped move it back toward the firefighters with the nozzle. I turned back toward the front door and noticed another firefighter making their way into the debris field we had created out of this living room. They were watching their steps carefully making their way to the middle of the room. Suddenly, without warning, the firefighter tried to step over the fire hose as it was pulled further. The firefighter stumbled toward me and I instinctively reached out to grab them, trying to stop their fall.

“I am so sorry…” the firefighter said as I caught their coat in my arms and helped stand them back up. Their helmet was thrown forward across their eyes until they stood up and straightened it out.

“No problem…” I answered as our eyes finally met. Under the big yellow helmet was a long brown haired brown eyed girl with an embarrassed smile which helped light the room. She cocked her head to the side and smiled looking back at me as she tried to reach the doorway. The only thing prettier than her bright smile were the dimples in her cheeks framing it. Her small frame seemed to be pulled down by the bulky fire gear as she walked through the debris, but she made it out safely.

“Ummmm….didn’t tell me about that did ya?” I said joking with Bill. He looked at me confused, obviously used to seeing the girl around the firehouse, and not thinking anything of it. Unfortunately for me, this was the first time I had seen her, and it was quite the surprise.

“Oh that’s Donna,” Bill would say nonchalantly as he shoveled debris out the window.

After what seemed to be forever overhauling this burned out house, we finally started removing hoses and tools and lights from inside and restoring the apparatus outside. Here I would spend some time with Donna on the back of the pumper helping pack hose on to the truck before we all gathered back at the firehouse.

I followed Donna from the gear rack to the front of the truck where she played with keys in her hand. It seemed like she was about to leave so I had to break the ice.

“You’re Donna right?”

“Yep,” she answered with that quirky smile, flashing those brown eyes at me once again.

This would begin the first real conversation, and a relationship, that would last for six years.

NEXT: My First Fatality

Volunteer Firefighter: Day One

February 9, 1982.

I couldn’t sleep the night before, and couldn’t concentrate the entire day through my classes. This would be the night the members of the fire company would vote on whether I could be a firefighter with them or not.

It was just after 9:00pm when the phone rang. Bill was on the other end to break the news to me. And it was good news. I wanted to run into the street and scream with pots and pans like the Fourth of July, but instead, I went to my room and secretly celebrated, staring into my mirror and listening to my scanner. I didn’t want my parents to see me out of control over the fire company. I remembered the rules, school comes first.

School was never my forte. I was only an average high school student at best, and my college grades weren’t anything to write home about. This concerned me, but not enough to distract me from the news, that I had just become a “volunteer firefighter.”

For the second night in a row, I didn’t sleep well. This time it wasn’t nervousness, it was the simple thought of going to the firehouse tomorrow as a member of the fire company. I would have to get my own fire coat, fire helmet and fire boots.

Again, more concerns.

My thoughts turned to my odd sized feet. My left foot was developed as a club foot, while my right one was deformed as a result of the over exertion making up for the left one. I wondered how this was going to work out with fire boots. What were the chances that the fire company had two different sizes I could wear?

I finally drifted into slumber with both concern and excitement whirling inside my head. Needless to say, it was a rough night.

Once again, school the next day drifted by in a frenzy of interrupted thoughts, voices and lights until the last class was over. Finally, I was paying attention to what I was doing, which was heading to the parking lot, and riding to my firehouse for the first time.

As Bill and I approached the station, he muttered something about who might be there and who I would have to see about getting my fire gear. My eyes couldn’t grow any wider as we came to a stop in the firehouse lot. The big bay doors seemed a little brighter today, and I moved a little quicker as we walked toward the firehouse door. My heart beat faster as Bill pulled his key out…

“Will I get one of those keys today?” I asked anxiously. Bill responded with an inaudible sound, which to me signified I was asking too many questions, too soon.
This, I would learn, is something new kids tend to do as they are oriented into the new organization. It would be something I was very patient with, remembering my early days with Bill.

Inside for the first time as a member, the smell of the apparatus and fire gear had a different stronger odor to me, and one I would fall in love with. Bill checked in at the radio room to see if we had missed any calls, hung the clipboard up and motioned for me to follow him to the rear of the apparatus. Bill peeked into the crew room and noticed the Captain sitting there watching television. After a quick discussion, the two came back out to me, scanning the apparatus parked in the bays.

Ed, the Fire Captain, was a man in his early 30’s, stood quite tall and was built a bit wide. As he stepped through the doorway toward me, his curly hair brushed across the top of the door frame.

“So I guess we have to get ya some gear huh?” his booming voice echoed off the block walls of the engine bays.

“Yeah I think so…” I responded following him toward rows of gear hanging on racks behind the trucks.

“What size are you?” he yelled back as he scanned the inventory.

“I’m bout 5-8”!” I snapped back anxiously.

The Captain stopped and turned toward me with a smile.

“I meant boot size, coat size…”

The blood was still rushing to my face as I corrected myself and provided the right numbers.

Bill appeared from behind one of the rows and handed me a pair of rubber hip boots, folded down, with yellow on the toes.

“Try these…” he said abruptly as he walked away still searching through hanging coats and boots.

My first impression of the fire boots were that they were a lot heavier than I had expected. I looked around for a place to sit and pull the boots on and saw nothing but the back step of the nearby pumper. My lack of balance would make it quite difficult for me to stand and pull my boots on, as I had seen the firefighters do so many times before.

Like a kid at a carnival, I sat down on the back step, but took in all the sights along the way. I stared and felt the diamond plated step, eyed up the ladder hanging alongside, and the hose bed above.

“Bill this is a little bit too big,” I said as I walked back to my gear rack with one boot on. Again, a unique way about me was to try only the right boot or shoe on since my left foot was smaller. If it fit the right foot, I was good to go. The left one would have to hang on and float around a bit inside a larger shoe. It was usually too expensive to purchase two pairs to fit both feet, so I became used to the extra room on the left.

“Here this should do it then,” again Bill appeared with another pair in hand.

Suddenly, all hell broke loose inside the firehouse. In the background of my gear fitting, dispatch tones broke through the silent overhead speakers. Pagers on Bill and Ed’s sides suddenly erupted into beeps and the two ran into the rows of gear without saying anything. The only voice I heard at that moment was coming from the speakers mounted in the corners of the engine bay.

“Station 69, 54, 50…22 North Pennell Road, Middletown Township, a chimney…”

The only thing I could think of was…”HOLY SHIT!”

“Grab the rest of that gear hanging right there!” Bill yelled back to me as he threw his own gear on. I hobbled over to the other boot lying behind the pumper, pulled it on and reached for the big black coat, and yellow helmet, hanging at the end of the rack. “Get on back here, let’s go!”

Bill again barked instructions to me as I was trying to match the clasps on the heavy coat, I looked to him for a little help, but he was gone, disappeared into the jump seats in the front of the truck. The engine roared to life as Ed started it from the driver’s seat. The red lights filled the room with a glow I wasn’t used to.

Other volunteers began running into the firehouse, quickly donning their gear and jumping into position on the truck. I stepped up on to the diamond plate I was just using as a seat, grabbed tightly on to the hand rail, and took a deep breath. I suddenly noticed another firefighter had joined me on the rear step.

“You guys ready!” Bill’s voice could be heard screaming back to us over the loud engine. “Yeah let’s go!” the man next to me responded. A second later, the engine roared and the truck pulled out of the station. I was now responding to my first fire call, as a volunteer firefighter.

With the sound of the engine, the siren and wind in our faces, the firefighter next to me tapped me on the arm…

“I’m John! You just join?” I just nodded in response.

“Me too, this is my first call!” I couldn’t believe that the two firefighters on the back step had never been to a fire call before. What a coincidence! Then I thought, how scary!

“All I know is that if they yell to drop the line, we pull this off,” I said patting the large three inch supply line packed in front of our faces. As the truck roared up the hill, the siren began blaring. Over the roof of the cab I could see the traffic light ahead, and it was red! The adrenaline pumped through my body so fast I could feel my heart pounding.

I looked back behind us and watched the cars stopped along the side of the road that had pulled over for us. As we pulled through the intersection I noticed a fire policeman standing in the road blocking traffic for us. The feeling of just how important we were at this moment washed over me. People all around us were stopping and letting us go, and for the first time in my life, I was part of this elite group.

“Bump!” John yelled over the siren to me. I gripped tighter and noticed he was bending his knees, so I did. The bump came and went smoothly. “If you ride with your legs flexed a little you just go with the bumps!” This was a tip I would repeat to new members in the future about a thousand times.

I looked ahead of the truck and saw flashing lights from another truck ahead of us. Soon the sirens subsided and we pulled up in front of a small two story brick house, my eyes poured over it looking for signs of smoke or fire or really anything at all.

The only sign of anything wrong was the two fire trucks parked outside of it, bathing it in red from their flashing lights. Ed called for us to follow him to the rear yard. Dragging my large boots across the blacktopped driveway reminded me of where I was when the call came in.

“Yeah these aren’t going to work…” I said to the tall Captain in front of me. He looked back over his shoulder and down at me almost like “who are you speaking to me during a fire call…”

I never mentioned it again, and the fire call turned out to be nothing for us to handle. Soon we were back on the truck returning to the firehouse, and finishing my fire gear fitting.

Other than getting my gear and hung up next to all the other firefighters' gear, the rest of the day was uneventful, and eventually, Bill did make me leave the firehouse.

Today I look back on that day and can remember it like it was yesterday. I still feel the fabric of the cotton jacket hose, the rust on the diamond plated step under my oversized boots, and the black top whizzing by below that.

Oh how times have changed...

How It All Began...

I had dreams, I guess. But it sure wasn’t to be a firefighter when I grew up, that part just kind of happened.

Sure I heard the sirens in the distance, and can still remember the sound of the old winding up and down of the antique siren as the fire trucks brought Santa Claus through town about a week before Christmas Day. Of course I would go running to the curb as they approached, but who didn’t like candy canes!

No, the first time I actually started “chasing fire trucks” happened to be about the age of 13 or 14. That’s when my friend from school began fulfilling his dream of becoming a fireman. I was just there for the ride. Suddenly, we would leap to our bikes, and within seconds reach our top pedaling speed as we leaned into the turns. I would be yelling questions up about where we were going, why we were going and what was all the excitement about. I would get a quick, “Fire Call!” yelled back to me as he pushed the pedals a bit harder. We would finally get to the firehouse where all the fire trucks had already departed of course, and we would then stand there while firefighters listened intently to squawking radios telling them how serious the call was, and whether they needed more help or not.

As my chest heaved in and out from the sudden workout, the smell of the firehouse became apparent. A mixture of smoke and soot, combined with a clean just mopped scent. It was hard to describe, but it was readily identified for years to come.

Soon the trucks would be roaring up to the front of the firehouse again, returning from their emergency. Backing each one into the station, the clanging of the bells ringing as an old back up alarm, fascinated me. Kids would then begin to collect outside the firehouse and suddenly, my friend and I were somebody important. The other neighborhood kids would be looking at us like we knew or had something they didn’t. And to be honest, I still wasn’t sure why we were there. Was this my friend’s job? Was he a firefighter who just wasn’t fast enough to get on a truck?

On our slow return trip to my own neighborhood, he would try to explain some of the things I just witnessed at the firehouse. He described each firefighter and what they had once said to him, or what he saw them do at one time or another. The more I listened, the more interested I became, but still wondered what all the racing across town was about. I didn’t care enough to ask why we did it, it was fun no matter what the reason.

My interest gradually grew more intent as the months and years passed. When I heard sirens, I began to think about my friend, and the guys I had met at the firehouse and wondered if they were all there, and what they were probably doing. I would repeat the different scenes I had witnessed in my mind as the sirens wailed into the distance.

I became addicted to the TV show “Emergency!” Johnny and Roy became household names and I began repeating the fire dispatches by heart. Some kids would make noises like a siren. I would imitate the dispatcher I would hear on the scanner and on the TV episodes. I found a hard hat my father used to wear when he visited Sun Oil Tankers. Soon, when nobody was watching, this became my make believe fire helmet. I took a large black magic marker and turned it from a white helmet with oil industry safety stickers, to a helmet with two large numbers on each side designating which fantasy fire station I belonged to.

It didn’t take long for me to hook up the new police scanner my brother gave me on my birthday, and soon I knew every fire station number and the dispatch tones for each station.

It was during a particular busy scanner day, when I approached my parents sitting on the back porch. My father was sitting with a drink in one hand when I advised him I wanted to become a fire dispatcher, just like the guys I hear on the scanner. He replied with a discouraging story about how the dispatchers are those who could not make it in any other field, and that most were retired old men who just sat around answering phones all day. This put such a damper on my dream of becoming that voice who told the fire department where the emergencies were.

When I was sixteen, I finally realized, my bicycling friend had realized his dreams. I saw him one day standing at a fire scene, with his long black coat and shiny yellow helmet. He was finally a firefighter. He no longer had to sit on his bike outside the bay doors, he was now allowed inside, and better yet, allowed on the big red fire trucks we had chased for the past few years. I was glad for him. I was very impressed. He knew what he wanted and apparently when after it until he got it.

I was walking out of my Junior High School one spring day and was greeted with the sounds of constant sirens from the distance. They seem to call my name, over and over. Suddenly, I noticed over the nearby tree tops, a thick rising column of dark smoke. I knew I would probably get in trouble for not going right home, but this had me fascinated. I pushed on through the wooded area, staring into the sky to make sure I was still heading the right way. I chased that smoke, like Dorothy and the Tin man pursued the Emerald City, for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, I emerged from the trees on the main road through town, and saw all the commotion. The restaurant in the center of town was on fire, and fire trucks from all over were converging upon the scene.

I took a position across the street where I could get a good view of the flames billowing out the front window, and the firefighters ducking in through the smoke. Hoses were quickly strewn across the roadway, water was pouring from the couplings as they made their way from the nearby hydrant to the pumpers in the parking lot. What a scene to take in all at once. It seemed too short, but time ticked away as I eventually circled the fire scene to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I finally gave in as the dark smoke became lighter and lighter, and I pulled my book bag up over my shoulder as I turned away from the action, and began my walk home.

That fire scene had an extreme effect on me apparently. I thought about what I watched for quite some time. I played it back over and over in my mind, the flames, the thick billowing smoke, the brave men and women who battled the flames with heavy hoses in hand, the fire trucks pumping water at high speed, while others screamed toward the scene to help out. If there would be a specific time and place where I caught the fire service bug, I believe it was at this fire.

The next few years for me were primarily spent trying to pass high school. I wasn’t a “bad kid” or anything, just had some trouble with the homework, the tests, the MATH! I loved writing and art, and did very well in those classes. I found it necessary to attend summer school in not only 9th grade, but 11th grade as well. Both times, it was for failing math class. Numbers and I never got along. I found it pretty entertaining that I had to go to summer school for math, but had to read articles in Reader’s Digest and write about them to pass summer school. How this helped my weak areas in mathematics was beyond me. But of course I passed since that was my best subject! I never asked, but maybe I was just in the wrong class.

During my senior year, I buckled down as they say. I knew I could not fail and go to summer school this year. I had to graduate and walk in my blue cap and gown with the rest of my class. And in June of 1981, that’s exactly what I did. I couldn’t believe it myself, but my name was called with the rest of the class as we rose and paraded across the large stage in front of the audience of classmates and proud parents. Of course we were ceremoniously handed a scroll of blank paper at first, but when I first got to open my real diploma, I swore I would hold on to it forever. It was such a challenge for me to get it finally, that I was intent to never let it go.

I had plans to go to college and get a degree in Drafting Technology. I had always liked art and drawing, and actually aced Engineering Drawing class. I knew this was the way for me to go. I continued to think this through the first semester of community college, but soon realized, I would not be able to do this without MATH!

While walking through the parking lot after classes, I noticed a guy I recognized from high school. Bill Grieco was a guy I would see in the hallways, but never once uttered a word to him. I remember seeing him in the cafeteria, walking home from school and even maybe in my homeroom. However, I never knew his name, never once acknowledged his presence, and he reciprocated the awkwardness to me as well.

Bill was on the football team, had stocky football player build, short black bushy hair and gold rimmed glasses. I thought I had his description down until one day in the parking lot I noticed something different about him. He was missing the fingers of his left hand. The hand was only a thumb, and a few small stubs where his fingers were supposed to be. I wondered what kind of accident he had to cause this, and never really thought about it being a birth defect. I then thought about him being able to play football, and was impressed.

The thoughts about Bill were fleeting. I didn’t run into him for another few weeks. However, one day, as I was walking into the bathroom, we ran into each other, literally.

With surprised looks on our faces, I stepped back and greeted this familiar face,
“Hey, didn’t you go to Sun Valley High School?”

A quiet enough kid that we never spoke in high school, and enough that my words shocked him during this sudden meeting, he stepped back to look at me confusingly.

“Yeah I did, did you?”

“Yeah, I saw you out here the other day and thought I recognized you from there.”

This was the initial conversation which would be responsible for most of what happened throughout the rest of my life.

Carpooling with Bill to college every day was a bit awkward at first, but eventually became natural. At first, we weren’t sure what to say. We had gone to the same high school “together” for the pat three years, yet this was the first time we actually said anything to each other. Several weeks passed before Bill asked what I was doing after school one day.

“Want to stop by the firehouse with me?” Bill asked, unaware of the interest I had already held in the fire department.

Little did Bill know what he had just done to me with the one innocent question. This was the beginning of what would be years of emotional and physical turmoil. Yet it would also mark the beginning of years and years of personal accomplishments I never thought would ever be possible for someone born with the severest form of Spina Bifida.

Well, it didn’t take long for me to answer, and within hours, we were on our way to the Lenni Heights Fire Company. This firehouse was located in a town just north of the town where I grew up. This experience would be very new to me. This wasn’t the firehouse I knew, it wasn’t the fire trucks or the same firefighters I had been watching as I grew up at home. But their admirable job was the same.

That day, from the time I left Bill in the parking lot, until the time I met Bill back at his car, well, is just a blur. My mind was steadily wandering to this new firehouse I would be going to after classes, and found myself on numerous occasions, being caught by the instructors looking out the window instead of at the chalkboard. It may have resembled my old days in high school and middle school, but at this point I just couldn’t help it. This was just a bad day for the teachers to attempt to teach me anything.

As my last class adjourned, my feet couldn’t get me up and out fast enough. I stuffed notes and a text book into my book bag as I walked down the hall, looking for the closest exit. I was to meet Bill back at his car as soon as classes were over, and like a young school kid running from elementary school on the last day of school, I shot out the lobby doors, and scurried up the stairs to the parking lot. I didn’t want to make it look like I was in a rush to go to the firehouse, but my body language did nothing to help me hide that.

My feet were clumsily stepping across the blacktop, my eyes anxiously scanned the lot looking for Bill, and a stupid grin felt like it was glued to my face. When I finally approached the car, with Bill sitting in the driver seat, I took a deep sigh, and tried to slow everything down, acting like it was just another post class meeting between us, before we drove home bitching about our teachers of the day. I tried to begin a conversation about the song on the radio, but it soon turned to how long Bill had been a member, who else from high school was a member, and soon the calls he had been on while a member there.

The drive to the firehouse was long geographically, but combined with my anxiety level, the trip seemed like it was taking forever. We eventually pulled into a parking lot which was situated on a hill. In front of us was a small two bay garage, two wooden overhead doors with a peaked roof. The building seemed to have been built when horses pulled the apparatus. However, to the left of us was the firehouse I had been waiting for.

The brick building had two large green bay doors across the front, enough to hide four fire truck bays behind them. Above the doors “Lenni Heights Fire and Rescue” was written in red letters. Bill led the way toward a green door with a small red plaque which read “Members Only.” My heart began racing a bit as I walked through this door, which to me seemed like a back stage entrance reserved for VIP’s.

Right away the odor struck me. It was the old familiar smell of the firehouse. Soot mixed with clean in some odd way. Whatever the mixture, it was a smell which would bring back memories of the old firehouse we used to ride to on our bikes. Across the front of the bays I saw four fire trucks of different sizes. A red and white step van was parked closest to me, while two similar looking red pumpers and then a large four wheeled drive vehicle sat at the farthest bay door. The apparatus to me looked like four warriors hiding behind the bay doors, waiting for the sign to be let out and attack whatever confronted them on the outside. Again, I could feel my heart beat through my chest and my breath quickened a bit with the building excitement.

Bill began the tour of his firehouse with a quick glance into a small closet like room with a window toward the fire apparatus. A large framed wall map hung on the opposite side and there was no door. I could hear those voices I heard on my scanner at home coming from inside this small alcove.

“That’s our radio room,” Bill said passing by the opening. I stopped briefly and glanced inside. Sitting on the white counter under the picture window sat two radios on top of one another. Clipboards hung from screws on the paneled wall next to them. Under the counter several large binders were nestled on to a crowded shelf. It appeared to me that even though this was probably the smallest room in the building, it must see a lot of action during an emergency.

“This is probably what you’re more interested in,” his voice echoed from behind a red and white fire truck. I quickly caught up to him as he continued his guided tour. “This is the rescue truck, one of the busiest in the county.”

I peered into the rear door of the truck, leading to an interior adorned with equipment on both sides. I could recognize the yellow air packs and masks hanging on one side, while other equipment sat on shelves on the opposite side. Bill motioned to get in and I took the invitation to climb up into the apparatus. Inside I could just imagine the guys who usually ride inside as they respond to emergencies of all kinds. I certainly felt like a little kid waiting in line for his first fire truck ride. I was actually inside one of those trucks I often saw racing past with the sirens wailing and the lights flashing.

Bill stepped back down out of the truck on a mission, “you’ve heard of the Jaws of Life before?” Heard of them? Hell, I’ve dreamed of them!

“Yeah I think so, for car accidents?” I was great at holding back the enthusiasm.

“Yeah we use these all the time,” Bill said pulling open a side compartment.

My eyes were large trying to take it all in. I didn’t want to miss anything and I was trying so hard to hear what the dispatcher was saying in the next room, while listening and following Bill from one truck to another.

Behind the resting apparatus were lines of coats and helmets and boots, not so neatly hanging on racks along the back and side wall. Some gear was dirty, some never worn clean. Black marks on the helmets, melted stickers and dirtied boots told a story of past firefighting battles this equipment had seen before I arrived. I noticed the different colored helmets hanging above the coats.

“These white ones are the fire chief’s and officers,” Bill explained walking through the aisle of fire gear like he was perusing the rack at Sears. “The yellow ones are firefighters.”

The more Bill guided me through this world, the more convinced I became that this is what I wanted to get involved in, somehow.

After a full tour of the apparatus, as if was about to be tested on them, Bill led the way through the metal door with into another room.

“This is where we hang out, crew room, game room, whatever.”

My eyes again were filled with new exciting visuals. The TV was on in the corner, framed by piles of VCR tapes. Trophies sat and plaques hung on book cases across the opposite wall. Three couches encircled the tile floor, each one with a person on it.

“Everyone, this is Pat, Pat this is everyone…” a low murmur groaned from each of the guys already engrossed in what was on TV. I nodded and smiled, “How ya doin?”

Bill continued through the TV room and through an arch way leading to a larger room.

“This is the game room, meeting room and bunk room is over there.” As Bill spoke, my eyes scanned across a long cinderblock wall covered with photographs of past incidents and emergencies. At one end of the room two guys were shooting pool. At the opposite end two guys were sitting at a rectangular table under a floor to ceiling bulletin board covered with papers of different sizes and colors.

Again, Bill tried to introduce me to these guys, but again, they seemed disinterested in any visitors at the moment.

Bill and I stayed at the firehouse for a short period of time, and unfortunately, no calls came in during our stay. Although this visit ended too quickly for me, little did I know, it would become an almost daily occurrence over the next few weeks. By January of 1982, I had made a number of friends at the firehouse, and these friends were quite special to me. They were actual firefighters.

Almost every day of school ended with a drive to the firehouse. I never complained, I had no where better to go. Only occasionally would I get to see a fire truck respond to a call, but mostly, I would hang out playing pool with the firefighters or just watching TV. Almost every time we stopped inside the apparatus bays, we would be joined by another firefighter who would then launch into a “war story” of what the last big fire looked and felt like. I quickly found out that these stories never wore out, and very few firefighters forget the “big ones.” I didn’t know it then, but I would eventually become that guy who had the war stories and the battle scars on my gear to show the new guy. But for now, I would let them all talk, as I learned about the fire service I so strongly admired.

This class-followed-by-firehouse routine continued for weeks. Finally, while perched on the back step of one of the pumpers, a new acquaintance of mine dropped the question.

“Pat, you are here so much anyway, why don’t you join?” the firefighter asked curiously. I looked at him first to see if he was serious. “I can get you the application right now if ya want…”

My eyebrows shot up across my forehead. I couldn’t believe what he was asking me. I shook my head with a smile trying to just blow it off, but never would there be a question asked of me which would make such a difference in my entire life.

The thoughts of him asking me to become a firefighter with him, not only stunned me, but I was actually surprised he would seriously consider me for the position. My birth defect was not exactly hidden from the public eye. I walked with a significant limp which many times would not only attract stares from those around me, but questions would be asked like,

“What’s wrong with your hip?” “What’s wrong with your legs?” What’s wrong with your back?” What’s wrong with your feet?” And my favorite of all time,
“Do you have Polio?”

With all this said, he would have at least seen the impairment, whatever he thought it was, and he would have already spoken to Bill about it, I only assumed. It sometimes appeared to me that I thought about my handicap more than anyone else, or so I was told as I got older by many friends and family members. But still the fact remains, I was asked to join the ranks of those who risk life and limb to save other’s lives and property. What my parents would say I wasn’t too sure, but I did know that somehow, someway, this was going to happen for me.

I don’t recall how I worked up to it, but the day I asked, or announced, I was joining a fire company, you could have wrung out my shirt from the sweat. I was never so nervous, because I was never really asking to go out on my own to do something this controversial, or at least considered controversial by my mother.

I sat on one side of the living room just inside the front door, perched on a small stool next to the television. My elbows rested upon my knees as I stared into the rug, trying to come up with the right words. My mother sat on one end of the couch carefully aiming her sewing needle in and out of a pair of jeans I had previously ripped. My father was paging through the newspaper in his chair next to the couch.

“I am going to join a fire company.” I announced somehow. My father looked up from his newspaper, my mother looked up from her sewing. There wasn’t a lot of discussion, but there was a lot of rules. My father laid them down as if chairing a committee meeting.

“You can join, but I don’t want you hanging there all day and night,” he paused briefly, “no using my car going to calls, racing through the streets, school must be going well before you consider going to any firehouse…”

I immediately thought to myself, “He wasn’t saying no.”

The next day after class, during our typical firehouse visit, I asked for a Membership Application. I was finally doing it. With the triumphant feelings of this exciting occasion in my life, came sporadic comments or opinions from those holding no faith in my abilities or determination.

One such discouraging person was my brother’s brother in-law, a former deputy fire chief from a neighboring company. He explained to my brother that I was “too much of an insurance risk” for the fire company to accept me. Well, this was not only discouraging to me, not knowing the amount of truth to his statement, but it also ignited an anger inside. I wondered how someone could make such a statement without even knowing exactly what my impairments were? How does this person know what I can and can not do?

NEXT: Firefighter - Day One