Jason Menard, WFD. He was thirty-nine. Died this morning fighting a fire in Worcester, Massachusetts. Left his wife, kids and parents. Saved his crew. Their wives, kids and parents will grieve, and mourn the loss of their husband’s officer, and console the men who got out, and will do their best to honor the memory […]

There were some tough guys back then, back in ’91 when I was a new guy and didn’t say much. Guys in their mid forties, guys who also didn’t say much but for far different reasons, guys who got on the fire department before it was a sought after position were the heart and soul […]

“The time is upon us—the dedicated firefighter—be it volunteer, call, or union to advocate for the fire side of our profession while maintaining our EMS proficiency.” https://www.fireengineering.com/2019/10/31/480509/engine-company-ems-keeping-the-fire-in-ems-response/

By Michael Morse There comes a time when a firefighter knows it’s time to say when. Usually, we know it long before we actually retire. Climbing icy ladders, hauling charged lies up burned-out stairways, looking for pulses on mangled bodies, and showing up again and again wears a person down. The thrill of the job—and […]

Make no mistake; we do what we do because we love it. We can carry on all day long about the hardship, the stress, the risk and the misery, but at the end of the day, when the ambulance is clean, the hosebed packed, the station ready for the next shift, the portable radio passed […]

By Michael Morse They are the best of calls, they are the worst of calls… Just about every firefighter I know would rather enter a fully involved, occupied fertilizer factory without a charged line than deliver a baby. Until, that is, they deliver one. Field deliveries are a bit unnerving, but they can be one […]

  EMS was something that I had to learn if I wanted to be a firefighter. I didn’t embrace it. I went through the motions, memorized rather than learned, and barely passed the exams that were needed to obtain my certification. I took the EMT Basic class with about seventy like-minded individuals, all of us […]

I wrote this shortly after peeling one of our regular Street People off of Broad Street and finding a little flower crushed beneath him… Green tendrils of life push through the cracks in the cement, and reach for the sky, oblivious of the litter and broken glass surrounding it. Somehow it thrives, and avoids being […]