Love letter to…Firefighters. Illustration by: Matt Fabrizio
Firefighters are one of the bravest people in my opinion. I might be biased in saying this because my dad is a firefighter, and I am so proud of the work he has done.
My father served as a firefighter from 1995-2020, and in 2020 he was forced to retire due to an injury he sustained. During his time on the force, he saved countless lives and risked his own life many times.
This past Monday marked the 20th year since the Station Nightclub fire in West Warwick. This tragedy killed 100 people and injured 230 others. Firefighters from all across Rhode Island responded to West Warwick mutual aid calls for assistance to put out the fire and save as many lives as possible.
Injuries and deaths ranged from burns to tramplings, and people even “drowned” from being piled on top of each other and suffocating. My father and his crew arrived on scene and began triaging people.
There was one woman my dad and his captain tried to save and they managed to get her into a helicopter to the nearest hospital, but she sadly passed before she even made it there.
My father told me about how hectic and tragic that night was and how he feels awful about the people who lost their lives. He wishes he could have saved many more people that night, but he did everything he could.
Every firefighter on duty that night did everything that they could to save as many people as possible, unfortunately their efforts didn’t pay off for a lot of people. That doesn’t mean they are any less of heroes, it makes them so much more than the word hero.
I believe that firefighters are so underappreciated and so looked over. People make comments about how they only save kittens from trees and how the water does all the work. Did the water do all the work when my father was launched out of a house almost 30 feet from an explosion?
No…didn’t think so.
I used to live in fear since the day I was born that my father wouldn’t come home to me because of a ladder truck incident, an explosion or any horrible thing my mind could think of. Everytime he left the house my heart started racing thinking that he was never coming back, that my mother would be widowed and that my siblings would no longer have a father.
Now that I’m older, I have now grown to realize that he knew what he was doing. All firefighters know what they’re doing and they know how to do their job efficiently and effectively.
One moment I can remember vividly where I was so proud of my father was during one of my track meets in high school. I was a sprinter, so I was on the other side of the track field, but on the other side was where the jumpers did their events.
One girl was jumping and when she landed she tore and/or dislocated something in her knee. My father was watching me and he heard the commotion around her. He ran over to her and was helping her however he could.
He was asking her questions and trying to distract her from the pain she was in. He could’ve popped the knee back into the socket, but he wasn’t sure if she tore something, so he waited for the first responders to get there. Luckily, the first responders were guys from his department that he worked at at the time.
Also, any time that there is an accident or if someone is having problems medically, my dad will stop everything and go to tend to them. If he’s driving, he will pull over and put his hazard lights on and help the person in danger.
This story is mainly about my dad, but through him I have learned to have immense respect for the first responders, and I think everyone should. Firefighters put their life on the line everyday, and they get little to no respect in return for the work they do and the sacrifices that they make.
I wanted to write this article and say thank you to the men and women who lay their life on the line everyday to make my life and everyone else’s life safer in this world.