Fire and Ice Paul Harvey
What is a Fireman? Author Unknown
I Wish You Could Author Unlnown
A Fireman's Tear Author Unknown
When I am called to duty, God...
Wherever flames may rage
Give me the strength to save some life
Whatever be its age.
Help me to embrace a little child
Before it's too late
Or save an older person from
The horror of that fate.
Enable me to be alert
And hear the weakest shout
And quickly and effectively
To put the fire out.
I want to fulfill my calling
And to give the best in me
To guard my neighbor
And protect his property.
And if according to your will
I have to lose my life
Please bless with your protecting
Hand my children and my wife.
Fire and Ice
By Paul Harvey
Nobody know why firemen are firemen. Not even they can tell you
why.
It's time somebody tried.
Fire fighting is the most risky of all dead-end jobs yet also the
ones where most workers are most likely to punch in early.
It's hard enough to believe that, impossible to explain it.
Fire and Ice are uncomfortable, separately or together.
Wives hate the hours; kids love the noise. Fire and Ice.
Any day at the firehouse, the bell from hell puts the dispatcher
on the horn with a tenement tinderbox address.
Into bunker pants, rubber turnout coat, grab the mask, and go.
Minutes later, you're on site. As others run out, you go in.
You'll need all you can carry.
The 4 pound ax, a 6 ft. hook and the Halligan pry-bar.
The ceiling concealing the smoldering has to come down, and it's
one of those stubborn tin ones.
In the scary dark, with heat eating you ears, you are coughing out
and tearing loose and pulling apart;
gulping air and tasting black, your windpipe is closing, and you
lost track as which way is out.
Is it worth it?
They've budget-cut your ladder company from six men to five,
so now everything you do is 16.67 percent more difficult, more dangerous.
Your air is low.
Inside your mask, you're throwing up.
There's a searing ember down your neck; you torn glove exposes a
smashed hand so
you can emerge from the holocaust hugging with your elbows somebody's
singed kitten.
Fire and Ice.
You've had minutes of exhilaration on the bouncing rear mount of
a hundred
foot Seagrave....
Hours of using all you've learned and learning more.
Now you're back at the station house.
You've unstuffed you nostrils with soapy fingers.
You can almost breathe again.
Next comes the tedious hours as you and the Brillo gang up the grimy
tools.
The cleanup crew at the firehouse is you.
When windows need washing and toilets need cleaning and floors need
mopping
and beds need making, you do it.
Fire and Ice; they both go with the job.
Then there's that night another engine company gets there first.
You see the wet-eared rookie hot-dogging ahead.
His academy boots are still shinny. You lose him inside the crackling
dark.
You forget about him until your helmet warning bell says "get out."
The battalion chief is calling you off.
You get out.
The other guy didn't.
He'd heard a scream from the bottom of burning basement stairs
and headed down there.
Then on the bubbling tar-paper roof, the 3 ton compressor broke
through.
That day, we lost two.
Oh yes, firemen cry.
But only briefly, because now comes the inevitable and ever-more
paperwork
just in case the Occupational Safety and Health Administration complains
or somebody sues.
Is it worth it?
Your B-crew pumper swapped his day shift so some family guy could
be
home for his kids birthday. Then outbound toward a false alarm,
your buddy gets blind sided by a hot rod driven by a drunk.
Fire and Ice.
The intercom barks again.
This time, it's a ware house. a big. fast, multiple blaze, probably
torched.
On site, engine men draped with icicles draped dragging a three-quarter
connect froze hose are waiting for your big line.
Ladder men can't make the building without you.
Search, rescue, ventilate.
Eventually, it's over and out. You are smoke smudged and sleepless
and
wrung-out but you won!
Behind graffiti-fouled walls, you saved what you could, but the
raging blaze
that wanted to consume adjacent buildings didn't, because you were
there.
Back at the firehouse before cleanup, you and the guys sit a spell,
tired but
stimulated, drinking coffee, laughing, feeling good about one another.
Nobody outside your world can ever know this feeling. In any other uniform,
you get streets named after you for killing people.
In this one, you risk you life to save people. Until one day, you
run out of
chances, and at one final fire, either you buy it or you don't.
If you
don't, it's only eventually to be brushed off with a puny pension.
Yet there's no third way you'd ever leave this job, and you're doubting
even
God knows why.
You're out of the shower now. Most of the grime and cynicism are
down the drain
when you hear a strangely familiar voice saying "It's worth it."
You're hearing this voice, and there's nobody there but you.
The quiet voice is now saying, "For salvaging things and people
from flames.
I have to rely on on your hands."
You look around; still nobody.
But when you get over your incredulity, you feel better.
Suddenly, todays crew cook in the kitchen hollers, "Chow."
It's time to eat.
It smells like roast beef today.
That'll be good. But you'll eat fast.
For any next alarm, you'll want to be ready.
What is a Fireman?
Author Unknown
He's the guy next door - a man's man with the memory of a little
boy.
He has never gotten over the excitement of engines and sirens and
danger.
He's a guy like you and me with warts and worries and unfulfilled
dreams.
Yet he stands taller than most of us.
He's a fireman.
He puts it all on the line when the bell rings.
A fireman is at once the most fortunate and the least fortunate
of men.
He's a man who saves lives because he as seen too much death.
He's a gentle man because he has seen the awesome power of violence
out of control.
He's responsive to a child's laughter because his arms have held
too many small bodies that will never laugh again.
He's a man who appreciates the simple pleasures of life- hot coffee
held in numb,
unbending fingers- a warm bed for bone and muscle compelled beyond
feeling- the camaraderie
of brave men- the divine peace and selfless service of a job well
done in the name of all men.
He doesn't wear buttons or wave flags or shout obscenities
When he marches, it is to honor a fallen comrade.
He doesn't preach the brotherhood of man.
He lives it.
I Wish You Could
Author Unknown
I wish you could know what it is like to search a burning bedroom
for
trapped children, flames rolling above your head, your palms and
knees
burning as you crawl, the floor sagging under your weight as the
kitchen
below you burns.
I wish you could see the sadness of a business man as his livelihood
goes up
in flames or that family returning home, only to find their house
and
belongings damaged or destroyed.
I wish you could know what it is to search a burning bedroom for
trapped
children, flames rolling above your head, your palms and knees burning
as you
crawl, the floor sagging under your weight as the kitchen beneath
you burns.
I wish you could comprehend a wife's horror at 3 a.m. as I check
her husband
of forty years for a pulse and find none. I start CPR
anyway, hoping
to bring him back, knowing intuitively it is too late. But
wanting his
wife and family to know everything possible was done.
I wish you know the unique smell of burning insulation, the taste
of soot-
filled mucus, the feeling of intense heat through your turnout gear,
the sound
of flames crackling, the erieness of being able to see absolutely
nothing in
dense smoke - sensations that I have become too familiar with.
I wish you could understand how it feels to go to school in the
morning after
having spent most of the night hot and soaking wet at a multiple
alarm fire.
I wish you could read my mind as I respond to a building fire, "Is
this a
false alarm or a working breathing fire? How is the
building constructed?
What hazards await me? Is anyone trapped?" Or to an EMS call, "What
is wrong
with the patient? Is it minor or life-treating? Is the caller really
in
distress or is he waiting for us with a 2x4 or a gun?
I wish you could be in the emergency room as a doctor pronounces
dead the
beautiful little 5 year old girl that I have been trying to save
during the
past twenty-five minutes who will never go on her first date or
say the words,
"I love you, Mommy" again.
I wish you could know the frustration I feel in the cab engine,
the driver
with his foot pressing down hard on the pedal, my arm tugging
again and again
at the air horn chain, as the cars in front of you fail to yield
right-of-way at an
intersection or in traffic. When you need us, however, your
first comment
upon our arrival will be, "It took your forever to get here!"
I wish you could know my thoughts as I help extricate a girl of
teenage years
from the mangled remains of her automobile, "What if this were my
sister, my
girlfriend, or a friend? What were her parents' reactions going
to be as they
opened the door to find a police officer hat in hand?"
I wish you could know how it feels to walk in the back door and
greet my
parents and family, not having the heart to tell them that I nearly
did not come back from the last call.
I wish you could feel my hurt as people verbally, and sometimes
physically,
abuse us or belittle what I do, or as they express their attitudes
of, "It
will never happen to me."
I wish you could know realize the physical, emotional and mental
drain or
missed meals, lost sleep and forgone social activities, in addition
to all the
tragedy my eyes have viewed.
I wish you could know the brotherhood and self-satisfaction of helping
save a
life or preserving someone's property, of being there in times or
crisis, or
creating order from total chaos.
I wish you could understand what it feels like to have a little
boy tugging at
your arm and asking, "Is my Mommy okay?" Not even being able to
look in his
eyes without tears from your own and not knowing what to say. Or
to have to
hold back a long-time friend who watches his buddy having rescue
breathing
done on him as they take him away in the ambulance. You know all
along he did
not have his seat belt on-sensation that I have become too familiar
with.
Unless you have lived this kind of life, you will never truly understand
or
appreciate who I am, what we are, or what our job really mean to
us.
I wish you could.
A Fireman's Tears
Author Unknown
The alarm rang, as it had so many times before.
He was the first of the fireman up and out,
Awakened from his bed at the station
By the clanging of the bell.
Engine 12 pulled out of the hall,
Dispatch paged another station.
And all the firemen aboard the truck
Were tensed with anticipation
"It's gonna be a nice 'un, boys,"
He said as he donned his gear.
And the young bucks smiled at him
As they drew ever near.
They turned onto his own street
And he could see the fire's work
He hoped their mother woke his kids
To see their dad at work.
His heart sank as he saw the home
That he so dearly loved
Going up in Smoke and flames
As he donned his gloves.
Agressively he hit the fire
And searched the rooms above.
And with a flare of personal vengeance
He saved what remained of his home.
As he left the world of flaming hell
He saw his little girl
He ran quickly to her side
and said "Honey, Daddy's here."
He would never forget what next she said
As he held her close,
"I love you, Daddy," she whimpered,
And he began to weep.
She died in his arms that night
The others, later on.
His comrades gave him their respects
but his family was gone.
He sits alone at the station, now,
There's no more spring in his step.
He stays detached from his fellows
to avoid once again being hurt.
He risks it all in fires, now,
No more concerns for his safety.
He has taken a solemn vow.
He won't let it happen to another, as long as he's around.
