On the day of my first call as a rookie firefighter you would have been hard
pressed to find a person more excited and happy about the direction his life
was headed in, someone who looked forward to the days he was able to go back
to the station. While I have always known that the fire service was where I
belonged and I am still just a rookie the baby of my shift I never really
thought about just how fast a persons decisions can change the course of
many other lives. While the first fire I went on was nothing more than a
small car fire caused by a carelessly discarded cigarette it was the next
call that really made an impact on me. That call was for mutual aid on a
major motor vehicle accident to help a neighboring department provide care
to the occupants of a small car they were pinned inside. I dont know where
the occupants of that small car were headed but I am sure when the three of
them got in the car they never thought that that trip would end with only
two of them surviving. The driver of this small car did nothing wrong he was
driving the speed limit, he was wearing his seat belt and the other two
occupants were properly restraind. The other vehicle was a large utility
truck I dont know much about the driver except that he was unharmed in the
accident and he made a mistake that all of us have been guilty of at one
time or another and that was not paying attention to driving for a brief
moment. During that brief moment he failed to stop at the intersection of a
busy highway and didnt realize it until the small car made initial contact.
The driver of that small car was driving with his wife and in the backseat
was there three year daughter. The little girl was at the age where she had
figured out how to wiggle her arm out out the buckled harness. I am only 21
years old but in the time I have been here on Earth and for the rest of my
life I know that I will never hear a more horrible sound than that of a
grown man screaming and being so overtaken by pain that he became ill. A
pain that nobody will ever be able to take away but a pain that could have
been avoided. The man and his wife survived but everyday of the rest of
their lives will be forever changed. The little girl didn't make it to the
hospital despite the best efforts of the medic who breathed for her the
entire way there even though he knew in his heart she was gone when he got
to her. As firefighters alot of times we meet people on the worst days of
their lives and its our job to do our best to make things better for them
but what can you do to help a person who just had life as they knew it
crushed never to be the same again? The one thing we can all do is pay more
attention to the road while driving instead of to the volume of the music,
or the way our hair looks, or text messages. Your not only putting yourself
in danger but even worse your putting innocent lives at risk.
