(This site in the The Patriot Web Ring is owned by Titus 2, Inc)

[ Previous Page ]     [ Next Page ]        Page:

This article was sent to me on one of the forums I belong to. I thought this would be a blessing to our visitors, so I have included it here. This is a slightly edited version of the original document I was sent. I removed some of the language that may offend a few of our visitors. We hope you enjoy this and along with our government and military, please remember rescue workers and their families in your prayers.
--Felix

I wish you could know what it is like to be a firefighter

Written by Master Firefighter Scott Robinson
Sandy Spring VFD - Station 4
2001

I wish you could know what it is like to search a burning bedroom for a trapped family, flames rolling over my head, my hands and knees burning as I crawl, the ceiling collapses and knocks me and my crew to the floor, momentarily trapping us. The family stands outside watching. Nobody told the firefighters that they were already out.

I wish you could know my compassion as I feel a wife's horror at 3 in the morning as I check her husband of 40 years for a pulse and find none. I start CPR anyway, hoping to bring him back, knowing that it is too late. In spite of that, we continue, wanting his wife and family to know everything possible was done to try to save his life.

I wish you could know the unique smell of burning insulation, the taste of soot, the feeling of intense heat through my turnout gear, the sound of flames roaring, the fear of not being able to see even my own hands in dense smoke.

I wish you could know what it is like to search a burning building and place my life and my crew's in peril to find a woman's "baby" only to learn that it was her pet dog and was already dead.

I wish you could know how it feels to go to work in the morning exhausted after having spent most of the night in a multiple alarm fire.

I wish you could read my mind as I respond to an alarm. "Is this a [bogus call], or a worker?" "How is the building constructed and how old is it?" "Is anyone trapped?" "Where is the closest water supply?" Or, if it's an EMS call, "What is wrong with the patient?" "Is it minor or life-threatening?" "Is this for real, or is it some nut-case waiting for me with a gun?"

I wish you could know the anxiety that I feel when I think, "Will this be the final call?" And wonder if I kissed my family goodbye and told them I love them before I left home today.

I wish you could stand with me in the emergency room as the doctor pronounces dead the beautiful teenage girl that I just pulled from a drunk-driving accident. She will never walk to the alter or utter the words "I love you daddy" again.

I wish you could know the frustration and anger that I feel in the cab of the rescue squad, the driver slamming the brakes hard as I sound the air horn and people fail to yield right-of-way to us as we try to reach the scene of an infant drowning in a pool. When they need us however, they are the first to comment about how long it took us to get there or how incompetent we are.

I wish you could know how helplessness I feel when I am the first to open a closet door and find a young man hanging dead from a rope because his girlfriend broke up with him.

I wish you could know my thoughts as I help extricate the body of a child from the remains of his parents' vehicle. I cry silently and think, "What if this was my son?" What are his parents going to say when they find out that "we're doing the best we can do" means we are taking their child's lifeless body out of a twisted mass of metal. Then I learn it wasn't the drunk driver's first offense.

[ Previous Page ]     [ Next Page ]        Page:

This page has been displayed 4 times this month, 842 times since January 2, 2005 .