For You, Mom

Remembering not everyone is on Facebook!

It was brought to my attention last night that due to outdated internet connections, not everyone is able to access Facebook and therefore neglected blogs do not go unnoticed. So I'm sorry Mom, I'll try...no promises...but I'll try to better about updating my blog.

The biggest news I can think to blog about today is what brought our small town into the spotlight last week. A kayaker lost his life while paddling the brook that runs through the state forest in town. With the snow melting and inches of rain falling the previous weekend, the brook was apparently irresistible to those who kayak. (Details I know have been found out through the media and not from my affiliation with the fire department...I point this out for two reasons I will address later.) From what I've read the man's kayak overturned, his fellow paddlers realized he had not resurfaced and went back to help. He was caught in a whirlpool and kept getting pulled back under. His companions eventually were able to pull him out and performed CPR to no avail. By the time they left the scene to go call for help it was not a rescue but a recovery.

The initial call came in sometime after 2PM. Members of our town's fire department and surrounding towns' departments began the mile and a half trek into the woods to begin the recovery process. I arrived at the command post around 7PM as an auxiliary member bringing food for those waiting and for those involved in the operation when they came out of the woods. What complicated matters even more than the hike in is that the man had been dragged out of the brook on the side of that was not accessible by foot. So using ropes and cold water rescue suits, department members had to get across the brook to the deceased then get him, our members and all their equipment back. The whole process took hours, many hours. At some point in the evening it was discovered that it would be easier to come out of the woods the opposite way they came in...if they'd only known that at 2PM. So at about 11PM, department members emerged from the woods with their recovery mission complete.

The man who lost his life, by all accounts that I've read, was an avid and accomplished paddler so this was not a case of inexperience. Apparently paddlers know the risk involved in the sport and perhaps that is what drives them to do it. One person wrote of him, "he went out with a smile on his face." We should all be so lucky to go out doing something we love to do.

The aforementioned points that I wanted to address are these: first, if I had been privy to any of this information through being an auxiliary member I would not be sharing it anywhere, let alone on a blog. Secondly, that's what strikes me most about the whole incident is really not only me but the people who were directly involved in the recovery didn't know details. In the few brief conversations I had, no one knew his name, where he was from, if he had family. And to them, for what they were doing those things were not important. They had a task that needed to be done and they did it.

Full time fire departments, at times, look down their noses at volunteer departments. They seem to feel volunteers are not professional enough. Although I am biased, I feel that volunteer fire departments bring more to the table. On our department we have truck drivers, engineers, arborists, etc. These guys don't sit around at the station waiting for a call to come in. When a call comes in they leave their jobs, their families, their whatever to help their fellow citizens for no monetary compensation. They don't do it for the recognition, they do it to help.

So if you have the chance remember to thank your volunteer firefighters and EMT's. You can thank the paid ones too, I may be biased but I'm not prejudiced.