At 115am, we responded to a medical call that was fairly routine. The problem with these calls is they are in the middle of the night and you lose a little bit of sleep..Well last night was no different. Go to bed after playing video games with the guys at midnight, alarm goes off at 115, we get back to the station at 150 and crawl back in bed....Alarm goes off again at 515 for a structure fire...
There are many different types of fires we fight. The normal run of the mill house fire where we go in, put it out, clean it up and leave...The grass fire that doesn't require much work MOST of the time...Car fires that are fairly easy...and the DREADED BIG fires that take forever....
Well this was on of those...As we are driving down the street we can see the flames shooting above the roof and we all knew it was go time. Many times when we see fire we go straight into it trying to save people or their property. Sometimes there isn't anything we can do but spray water on it and try to contain it. They are not as much fun because we just stand around spraying water. We would rather run into a burning house than sit outside spraying water...Well sometimes it happens..It took us over 5 hours to finally get the fire out and after it was extinguished we had the glorious job of climbing through the junk finding smoldering materials...It is a dirty job that has to be done...
Why am I talking about the fire? Well this morning as I was sitting out there spraying water on the fire it allowed me to start thinking. I have a dangerous job and when we go into fire I think a ton about my family and this morning was no different.
Family is like fire fighting...Sometimes a situation arises that you have to run into before it gets out of hand. In these situations, things can get out of control very quickly if you do not intervene. Sometimes situations are simple and do not require much work to accomplish the goal. Many times there isn't much you can do during a situation so you have to sit back a watch. You have to let the situation take it's own path and when all is said and done you intervene and do the dirty work cleaning up the mess.
That is where we are right now in our lives. We tried to intervene numerous times but the fire was too big....We tried to simplify it and the work didn't get done....So we sat back and watched until it was time to get in there and get dirty...
The thing about the fire this morning (as boring as it was putting the fire out) our job allows us as grown men to act like children playing in the mud...The work is dirty but it is a blast...The work is tedious but the reward is worth it......
Another great thing about my job is the teamwork it takes to accomplish the task at hand...I am blessed with a great group of guys who I can rely on when times get tough, when I don't have time to look behind me to see if there is someone who has my back if I get in trouble.... It is comforting knowing that at anytime I can turn to one of these guys and they would give their life to save mine...that is what a teammate is... That is what a family is...Do we get a long all the time? NO! Do we give each other a hard time? YES Do we correct each other when someone does something wrong? Most of the time! Do we do it tactfully? Sometimes...Do we hurt each others feelings? YES! Would we die for one another? ABSOLUTELY!
That's what family is and that is what family does.....
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