Firefighter News Headlines or, Where Are the Murderous Plumbers?

 fire life  4 Responses »
May 122010
 

I read a lot of firefighter news. I have Google Alerts set up to show up in my inbox every morning. I also follow a lot of fire news linkers on twitter. I don’t read everything. But I do when I see a headline like this: Firefighter, Son Due in Court Wednesday. And on that page is a video titled, “Firefighter and Son Charged with Murder.”

He’s innocent until proven guilty (you know, despite the presence of eye-witnesses, ahem), of course, so I won’t be commenting on the case. What I do want to ask is this: what is his son’s career? Really, I need to know what his son does for a living.

Because we obviously had to know that the man-beating father with poor parenting skills was a firefighter. So, I want to know what the son does. Is he a CPA at his wits end at the end of tax season? A glee club teacher gone crazy after too many rehearsals for sectionals? A freelance writer who had been holed up working on a piece for too long? Was he a train conductor, a construction worker, a member of a band? Did he teach small children right from wrong in our school system? Did he fix my computer after hackers wrecked all of my data? Would he have come to fix my pipes after my kids threw something in the toilet that clogged everything up? Those occupations might be mentioned in the article at some point but would make an unlikely headline.

I get it. Firefighters, like police officers and soldiers, are held to a higher standard. They are here to serve and protect. When they go rogue and beat someone to death or start fires or any other number of heinous crimes, it’s kind of scary. These are the people we expect to save us. These are the people we count on when something bad is happening in our own lives. And so, when I hear a story about some firefighter who has gone off the deep end and started his own unintentional or, if the crime is premeditated, intentional smear campaign of firefighters everywhere, I want to create my own headline that reads: Freelance Writer, Full-Time Blogger and Part-Time Newspaper Photographer Goes Bat Poop Crazy and Hits Really Stupid (Alleged) Crime-Committing Soon-to-be-EX-Firefighter Over the Head with Her Really Heavy Purse-slash-Camera Bag. Except I’m able to keep my anger in check.

But that makes my other point, doesn’t it? If I beat someone up alongside the road, they’d most likely use my title of mom to make titillating headlines. Unless I was at, say, the BlogHer conference. Then I might get some reference to my work, though it would be something like, “CRAZY BLOGGING WOMAN KILLS EQUALLY STRANGE PEERS.” If my husband delivers the beatdown, well, screw his role of husband and father, it’s a firefighter! There are so many job titles that would never have made that headline, let alone the small article itself. I really want to see more occupational titles in headlines though. So I’m sure to avoid every person in any profession. Because the bad seeds should be able to speak for us all.

All of this is to say that my heart goes out to Mark Wallace’s family, the man who was beaten to his death by this unfortunate so-called firefighter and his apparently jobless son. I am so very sorry for your loss and that it came at the hands of someone who was supposed to protect.

Fears of a Fire Wife

 fire life  7 Responses »
Apr 072009
 

Every third day, FireDad’s alarm goes off at some awful and early hour. He presses snooze too many times and annoys me. Then he showers, gets dressed, gives me a kiss (which I sometimes do not remember when BigBrother wakes me up an hour or so later) and heads out the door to the fire department.

Every third day, I push down the fear that the clicking of the lock on our door will be the last.

I say “push down” because I have learned, the hard way, that dwelling on the fear is not the way to spend every third day. When FireDad first joined his department, I spent that day in a general state of fear. I called his cell phone far too much just to “check in” and see if he was “okay”… or not. I left the scanner on at a high volume and would pause everything to listen if there was a fire call. I once panicked when I heard that he was heading to the hospital, only to find out that he was heading there with a patient in the ambulance. I drove myself crazy every third day.

That process became somewhat unhealthy and hard to maintain when two little dudes were relying on me to be present and non-hysterical. I knew something needed to change. I couldn’t sit, ear glued to the scanner and still be the mom I needed to be. And so, I turned off the scanner. And I started scheduling lots of things to do on the days he was working.

And it worked. Kind of.

I am still aware that my husband is in danger when he heads out the door. When we go to bed the night before his shift day, more so than other nights, I make sure that we fall asleep without any issues between us. (I don’t normally go to bed mad but, well, it’s happened.) Keeping busy with the boys and life does help but, every now and then, my mind gets away from me. It’s usually when we’re out and about in town and a siren sounds. Like the time we were at the bank and watched the trucks round the corner and head off into the distance. It takes all of my willpower not to follow those trucks. And, to be honest, my sons would love to see their daddy in action but, for right now, we talk about what daddy is doing (manning the hose or driving the truck) as we head off to whatever it is we were doing.

He’s only had a minor injury in the four years he has been on his department. But I’ve watched enough fire movies and episodes of Rescue Me (season 5 airs tonight on FX!) that my mind can jump to worse-case-scenario at the drop of a fire helmet. At the same time, I know my husband is a smart man and that his crew members are loyal. But, even keeping busy and knowing what I know, those fears haven’t managed to fully dissipate. Perhaps I need more time.

All of this is brought to light, of course, as three police officers were ambushed in Pittsburgh this past Saturday as we were home visiting friends and family. As we watched the events unfold on the news, I thought of FireDad who was working and stayed back home. No, he’s not a police officer. But as I learned of the officer’s families, I knew the difference in uniform made no difference. A wife and a fiance sent their loved one off to work that morning, pushing the dangers that their men may face to the back of their minds. One officer was off duty and set to be returning home. His wife was likely awaiting his arrival. One was just engaged, a fiancee not fully understanding what she was up against and whose life is now forever changed. Between them, five daughters are now without a father. Like a fire set by an arsonist, these men were unnecessarily taken from their families. The loss of these three men in a city that I love continues to bring tears to my eyes. I have no words that make it all better as I never hope to understand the loss. I can, however, offer my prayers, my shoulder and my thanks for those who gave their lives to protect other people.

So today, as FireDad sits in the fire station about a mile from our home, I’m torn. How busy do I have to keep myself to ignore the dangers that wait? How many times do I call? Do I turn on the scanner today? Do I panic every time I hear a siren, imagining the worst? Or do I just say a prayer that he will be kept safe, let him know that he is loved and go about the business of our family life because normalcy seems safer safer than any alternative?

I don’t think I have another option.

[If you are interested in donating to the families of the fallen officers, the city of Pittsburgh has set up a fund where you can designate to whom/for what you want the money to be used. (For the children, for the mothers/widows, etc.) You can read more here. The FireFamily will be making a donation for the children as I can't imagine my children, at any age, saying goodbye to their daddy.]

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