I miss getting to work an hour early, the apparatus floor ghostly quiet, the boot room waiting, smoke mixed with sweat and leather, gear lined up, squared away, waiting for bodies to fill it. I miss signing the accountability sheet, seeing who was already there, climbing the stairs and entering the day room, hot coffee […]

Life is short. When we are kids our days seem endless, and days and weeks crawl by. As we age, and count our time on earth in years, then decades, we begin to see just how quickly it all passes. In our youth, we are fascinated with possibilities; anything is possible, and the world is […]

There’s something about Fire Chaplains. . .   ‘He showed no fear at all as he made straight for the relics inside the Cathedral, and made sure they were saved. He deals with life and death every day, and shows no fear.’ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6927345/Fire-chaplain-helped-Bataclan-victims-entered-burning-Notre-Dame-save-Crown-Thorns-relic.html

By Michael Morse Before you know it, your career will be over. You may make it 10, 20, 30, or 40-plus years; it matters not, it goes by in a blink. I made it to 25, spent more time than I care to recall complaining about this or that, the shift coming in or the […]

Twenty years ago I thought I would do this job forever. I had a dream; work in Providence till I was sixty and they threw me out, then move to somewhere where they have a volunteer fire department and put my experience to good use. The department offered a 50% pension after twenty years, we […]

I’m a lot like most firefighters I know; we work. We didn’t become firefighters because we were looking for the easy way. The fire service has been very good to me. I put a lot into it, took every opportunity to advance, got the certifications and commensurate pay raises. Overtime was abundant. That was a […]

It’s 0600 hrs., the sun remains hidden, waiting under the horizon to swallow the darkness. thirteen hours into an endless thirty eight hour shift I’m not sure if my day has begun or my night has ended In a forth floor apartment contractions start Five children, all under five years old wake to screams and […]

I would often sit in the back of the ambulance when a job was done and simply let things settle. Tension takes time to leave a space where a life and death struggle has happened, and the confined space of an ALS vehicle doesn’t have a lot of room for the air to clear. Much […]

I had the opportunity to talk about my book, Mr. Wilson Makes it Home at a book club last week. One of the people there asked about PTSD, and if I had been officially diagnosed. That’s a tough one. Over the years I’ve participated in a number of Post Incident Stress Debriefings, and sought individual […]

House fire, reports of a man trapped in the basement. Thick, black smoke with wisps of yellow pouring from the basement windows. A darkened door, firefighters putting on their masks then disappearing into the ink. More firefighters arrive, another attack crew follows the charged line through the front door, radios clacking, sirens in the distance […]