Reflections Last evening, I was fortunate enough to show up for a meeting and was an hour early, due to a simple communications mishap. I was actually blessed by the meeting that took place in front of the one I was scheduled to attend. The fire department that is located five miles south of my home town called for a critical incident stress debriefing because they, as well as my department, have been subjected to a series of rescue and fire calls which have come very much on the heels of each other. It seems that there have been seven jaws-of-life calls within a five-week period. There have been several fatalities with the calls. On one of the most recent calls, we pulled up on the scene of a one-car roll over accident that left one person dead on scene. Along with the deceased person, there were nine others, mostly children, spread out over the median of the expressway. I know from my life’s experience, as a thirty-two year veteran of the Chicago Fire Department and as an eight-year member of the Topinabee Volunteer Fire Department, that there is a cost for being a rescuer. As the debriefing unfolded, thoughts and awarenesses came to the surface for me as well as others. We did share these thoughts with each other at the meeting. As for my own revelation, I became aware of the totally outlandish level of stress-producing events that I was exposed to by my former career. The sheer number of calls that my C. F. D. partners and myself, responded to were an overload from the beginning. My first station responded to 500 calls a month. There were days that we witnessed six, eight and ten structure fires on a shift as well as myriad other nuisance and rescue calls. Among these responses were children dying or being maimed, shot or abused. People were in such dire straights that you found yourself having to harden your outer shell in order not to be run over with their grief and pain. This hardening was not out of indifference but rather done as a survival technique. I am aware that as firefighters we were carriers of pain and suffering. We infected our families and close friends with that which was splashed on us by touching the lives of the people of pain. In earlier days, we dealt with the stress by humor, drinking, sex and working extra jobs in order to avoid or escape what was clinging to our mind, body and soul. Our mentors on the job were veterans of WW II and Korea. They would tell us that if we stopped to think about all the crap that we witnessed, then we would shut down and not be able to do our job. I realize that many of these brave men jumped from the stresses of war right into police and fire work. So instead of coming home and dealing with re-entry, in order to return to a hoped for sense of peace and calm, they, in fact, dove head first into another war. The strife of the friction coming from the trauma of war and the social classes struggling for their place in society was heading for an eruption. Just as the soldiers were put in the middle of a conflict between two or more philosophies, the police and firefighters were put in the middle of a battle that has been brewing since the founding of this country. One cannot throw the firefighters of this great country into one lump or category. It is apparent that some found work in the big urban areas and as a result they accrued the effects of working with people who were compressed into small spaces. The spaces were of a mental, physical and spiritual nature. These conditions forged a type of firefighter and policeman who became our municipal marines who fought a war that most people would just as soon not recognize. Can you see a familiar pattern here? Of course, the fire and police, along with the poor and disadvantaged people, are fully aware of the struggle. Between urban renewal and section eight housing we have spread the same conditions to towns of all sizes. I mention all this information to set up a view of paid on call, full time and volunteer firefighters, that is, and has been, forming in my mind and in my heart. In writing this expression of my view, I want to make it crystal clear to anyone who hears or reads this essay, that there is no intent of comparing one group against another, trying to show one as superior to the other. I believe both are the same or similar creatures. It is more my intent to express the pride, admiration and genuine affection that I have come to feel for the full time, volunteer and paid on-call members of the fire service wherever they may be. In my time in the C.F.D., I responded to thousands upon thousands of calls for help and assistance and was never in the home of anyone I knew on a personal level. That had its good points, as it allowed me to perform my job in a more professional manner. This condition allowed me to ward off, to some degree, the personal connecting to a victim or victims. This never fully worked to my knowledge. I have worked in a department for the last eight years where you find that almost every call you respond to is someone that you know or is known by a member of your crew. The chances of being related to the recipients of your services are greatly increased. These two factors alone carry stress factors that I almost never witnessed in the C.F.D. The ability to walk away from trauma and its residue, to some degree, was what made me able to withstand a long career. Not that my family or I got away without scar tissue and the effects of dealing with people of pain. Rather, it is becoming clearer every day, that living in the neighborhood, where you live and love, is a great stress multiplier. In essence, it takes fewer calls and eye witnessing to produce the negative effects on a volunteer firefighter. When an increase in calls, fatalities and property loss occur in a small community, then there is a cause for concern over the well being of a department that experiences these events. I have been a lifetime member of a firefighters union and would not have done it any other way during my career in Chicago. It was and still is the right thing for that department to do. However, I find it increasingly difficult to insult or impugn the integrity of a firefighter who receives little or no compensation, yet is willing to put his or her life on the line in order to protect the lives and property of his or her neighbors or loved ones, as well as anyone who passes through his or her life. To work for others and put it all on the line, is a statement about each firefighter, full-time, volunteer or paid on-call. It is what has made this country great. To lose our vision or mission would be awful. We need to come together, not separate. Our enemy is the same. Our pain is the same. Oh how I wish our voices were the same! I have come to greatly admire the people who do what we do. It is with a whole new understanding that I view and appreciate firefighters. When one of us is lost from our cause, due to burn out, injury or death, our ranks are weakened by that loss. I love and appreciate you who step into the gap to save or retrieve life from death. No one of us is any greater than the other. It is our choice to serve other that makes us a breed apart, not the title on our W-4. © Copyright Firenuggets.com 2005 • Click here for Terms and Conditions of Use
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