My hero

My dad is my forever hero.  I know for some girls when they are little, their father is their hero.  But then they grow up and see more of reality and suddenly, he’s not so much anymore.  It doesn’t meant they don’t love their fathers any less, but… he’s no longer a hero.  My dad is my forever hero.  The story below will never appear in newspapers.  My father’s name will never appear in the papers and he won’t be interviewed for local news.  Even if they knew about it, he won’t allow them to print his name.  He does not want the fame or acclaim or boasting.  That is not why he’s a firefighter.  I may have a lot of abandonment issues with my father, but those issues have nothing to do with the Christmas Days where he answers a call for a fire.  Or when he would drop me at the fire house while he went out on a call.  I always thought about how I would feel if my house was on fire.  I would want the firemen to come running too.  Some day, I want to be able to tell my children and my grandchildren about the amazing man their grandfather was.  I want to remember his deep caring and his sense of humor and his quiet strength.

Automatic fire alarm at 5:something AM this morning. My dad is on call so he’s at the fire house in under 4 minutes. Meanwhile, another fireman who lives close to where the alarm came from stopped at the house and radioed in that there was definitely smoke coming from the house and no answer to his knocking on the door. They upped it to a 1st alarm.  Eventually it became a 2nd alarm. 

My dad along with Paul and Chris arrive about seven minutes later. Typical square house, front door with a side door. Paul and Chris go into side door to clear and my dad starts laying hose. Paul and Chris are working their way through the house and go out the front door. Chris tried to open the door, but it was stuck – like a mat was caught up against the door. So he and Paul pulled it open and Chris stepped outside to tell my dad they weren’t done clearing yet and hadn’t located the source. He turned to go back into the house and couldn’t get the door open again. So my dad goes up to help him and the door feels like there’a something soft pushing up against it. Then suddenly the door swings open and there is a woman’s body lying on the floor. Chris yells "Where the hell did that come from!?" When Chris went outside, Paul started checking behind the door and found the resident unconscious against the door hinge. That was what was keeping the door shut. So he pulled it away to open the door and shocked the daylights out of Chris. "Where the hell did that come from?!"

My dad and Chris carried the woman, a 60-something-year-old, out of the house and she was brought to the hospital and then airlifted to another hospital. Dad said the fire had been burning probably about ten or twelve hours, caught in the basement’s drop ceiling. It finally found a hole by a closet full of food and started burning the food which finally activated the smoke detector. He said it was probably about 13 minutes between the dispatch and them pulling the woman out of the house.

My heroes.

And my dad is still cracking up over Chris’s reaction hours later.

"Where the hell did that come from!?!"