Lifesavers

Firefighters need a new name but the word lifesavers is already
taken by a piece of candy. So, let’s just call them our
guardians.
Our volunteer and career fire safety crews do more than fight
flames and battle smoke; they dedicate themselves to public safety,
property protection and community awareness.
Lately, our government and paid fire professionals have been
mentioned in the news because of their pension plans that are part
of every local government’s current budget troubles and general
fund deficits.
But ask a fireman or firewoman — especially a volunteer — why he
or she was first drawn to firehouse duty and a rich pension plan
will not be part of their answer. Helping others and joining a team
of equally dedicated men and women will be what is mentioned
more.
Sorry to say, but it sometimes takes the tragic death of a
firefighter — like the deaths of San Francisco firemen Anthony
Valerio and Vincent Perez — to rouse our attention to the daily
vigilance and supreme call to duty with which our
“firefighters” (guardians) serve all of us on a daily and 24/7
basis.
After 9/11 and the hundreds of heroic tales from the ashes of
the World Trade Center, we all learned new reasons to be eternally
grateful for the dedicated service of our public safety guardians.
But after 10 years, many of those once-celebrated heroes are once
again anonymous survivors, some left with life-altering traumas,
painful disabilities and lost careers.
As thousands of firemen gather in San Francisco this week for a
memorial to the two SFFD firemen, among them will be a number of
those injured heroes and victims of on-duty tragedies. One of those
will be Melanie Stapper, whose story is shared in today’s
newspaper.
“Some people are just that way,” she explained about her choice
to be a firefighter and public guardian. “If we see people in
danger we have to run to help. We don’t know why, we just do,” she
said.
Another fallen hero is Geyserville’s Dale Goode, now 76, and a
paraplegic since a falling tree crushed his body while answering a
wildfire call in 1976. “I wish I hadn’t jumped on that fire truck
that day, but it had to be done,” he said this week.
We see our local firemen and firewomen at the firehouse, calmly
resting and in wait. We see them riding in their shiny red trucks
in our parades and we greet them each year as they flip pancakes at
the annual benefit pancake breakfasts. We mostly don’t see them at
work when they answer the fire siren late at night, during weather
storms, floods and at remote wildfires. They don’t work in front of
an audience.
As with the tragedy of the two fallen SFFD firemen, every fire
call could mean danger and death.
“Safety is always our first job,” said Sebastopol Fire Chief
John Zanzi. His crew of mostly volunteers and all other fire units
across Sonoma County do continuous training and practice drills
that has led to a superlative safety record here. It has been 23
years since the last on-duty firefighter fatality, a tragic death
of Guerneville volunteer Dick Sager at Odd Fellows Park in
1988.
We can say our firefighters are given too rich a pension plan,
or we can say no salary is enough when you put your own life on the
line. Whichever response, there is more we can do to support the
services of our public safety guardians.
We should follow their lead and do as much as we can for our own
fire safety. When we check our fire alarm batteries, mow our weeds
and clear brush to make a “defensible barrier” around our homes and
property, we are making it safer for both ourselves and our
firefighting crews.
We can all be lifesavers.
— Rollie Atkinson