Life sucks.
I've been a volunteer firefighter for 15 years. Our district is semi-rural and we do a lot of mutual aid calls for the surrounding districts. My district averages about 1 or 2 structure fires/year, if it were not for mutual aid we would never see flames.
Anyway, a few weeks ago, we were hosting our annual 3 day fundraiser at the station when our pagers went off for a dwelling fire with entrapment. Since we had a large number of our active firefighters already at the station our response was quick and well attended. I managed to get on the first out truck so when we arrived on scene I was on the hose team that made first entry. Lots of fire and heavy smoke. We were able to locate the victim and pull him out. He was air-lifted to a trauma center but passed a few hours later.
I'm not telling this story to make myself feel good about my personal efforts. Simply to illustrate that in my neck of the woods we put about 30 well trained and unpaid volunteers on the line on a Friday night to do well by the community, our community.
Losing you home and belongings to tragedy sucks, true. Finding yourself on a respirator also sucks. Being alive and able to complain about your situation in life when you could be dead sucks only to the DUmmies.
Personally I'm of the opinion this is a made up story but it makes the point.
I volunteered in a tourist town in Indiana for quite a few years where I used to live. It was small, 2000 people most of the year but summer ballooned to like 20,000 peak (at least that's what they always reported). That means they could never really hire more than 4 full-time guys... In the summer some of us volunteered to help pick up the slack. In the span of about 8 years I only went into flames once... house fires are pretty rare. I mostly followed the trucks, picking up all the junk that fell off on the way (hey, that's an important job too!).
I had most of my fun driving the ambulance... back then getting certified was pretty easy. Once you got your card, then they taught you how to *really* do it. I can remember it was my second or third run and I was complaining people would move over. The fire chief was with me in the passenger seat. He said "straddle the centerline and floor it, they'll move". By god, they did. After that, it was all fun. Mostly practice and training.. scuba, repelling, soaking cars on Main St "testing" the pumps. We had a blast all summer out there and I learned a lot. They did the same thing in the police department. I rode shotgun almost every weekend on the night shift all summer long as a volunteer. I doubt they would even allow untrained police to function these days. All I had to do was take an aptitude test, an oath, and supply my own gun (my father-in-law was the police chief). Good times when I was young and full of vinegar.
I don't know why I decided to hijack this thread, but that brings back a lot of fun memories... not much inline with someone dying in a house fire though.
