Jeff Wilser - Becoming a Firefighter

Simon & Schuster

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition March 2021

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Illustrations by Donna Mehalko 2021

Jacket design by Alison Forner

Jacket art by Puruan/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wilser, Jeff, author.

Title: Becoming a firefighter / Jeff Wilser.

Description: First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster, 2021. | Series: Masters at work | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2020032857 (print) | LCCN 2020032858 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982139803 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982139865 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Fire fightersMissouriSaint Louis. | Fire ExtinctionVocational guidanceUnited States. Classification: LCC HD8039.F52 U585 2020 (print) | LCC HD8039.F52 (ebook) | DDC 363.37023/73dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020032857 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020032858

ISBN 978-1-9821-3980-3

ISBN 978-1-9821-3986-5 (ebook)

T O THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE MEMBERS OF THE FIRE SERVICE

W e are racing to a child who may die. No one says anything. Ramon slips on white latex gloves. So does Tyler, the firefighter sitting next to him.

Its our ninth run of the day. Five minutes earlier we were joking about chicken wings. The sirens blare. Ramon takes out his phone and checks Active911, an app that syncs to the network of the St. Louis Fire Department (STLFD). Truck 30: Responding to a child in cardiac arrest.

As the truck speeds to the scene, Tyler opens the medic bag and grabs the automated external defibrillator (AED). He removes the electrode pads, the ones that send electric shocks to the heart, and replaces them with pediatric pads; if you forget to do this, the normal pads could send too much of a jolt, possibly killing the child.

In less than three minutes we reach the scene, a busy intersection next to a Methodist church. Ramon, Tyler, and their captain fly from the truck and hustle to a small crowd that has gathered over a child. Two ambulances arrived before usa good sign. I cant see the child because of the crowd.

But I can see the mother.

Shes a young woman, African American, and shes crying the sobs of primal anguish. Grief pours from her body. This is a woman who may be watching her daughter die.

The crowd parts as the medics carry out the little girl on a stretcher. She looks to be five years old. Her hair is tied in pigtails. Shes motionless, her eyes closed. I cant tell if she is alive or dead.

Now Im crying. I turn away so the firefighters cant see my tears. The mother shrieks louder. The stretcher is carefully placed inside an ambulance. The back doors close and the ambulance drives away.

On the way to the call, Tyler told me that the odds of saving a child in cardiac arrest were slim, because, realistically, its tough to get there fast enough to intervene in time.

For a fleeting second the girl flatlined, but the first responders brought her back. They gave her CPR and used the AED and they brought her back.

She was alive. She would live.

This is one of the most wrenching sights I have ever witnessed, but for Ramon and the other firefighters, this is another Tuesday. I would not learn of the girls fate until later, just as the firefighters, so often, never learn what happens to the people they save, or those they are unable to save. This is just one of the 119,000 calls that the St. Louis Fire Department responds to every year. This is just one of the 35.3 million calls answered by fire services nationwide.

In most of these 35.3 million calls, the caller is having one of the worst days of their life. They are calling because a teenager has been shot, or their kitchen is in flames, or their boyfriend has overdosed on heroin, or their daughter is in cardiac arrest. They are calling because they need help. They might not even realize that their call to 911 reaches the fire department, but it does. They call for help and they get the helpalways, because the fire department never says no. The fire department will help no matter who you are or where you live. Firefighters are wired to help, to serve, to save.

Firefighters do more than fight fire. Todays firefighters are medics, electricians, grief counselors, hazardous material specialists, even defenders of homeland security. They solve problems. They answer prayers. A total of 1.1 million firefighters work together, in small teams, to respond to our nations emergencies. Around 700,000 of them love the work so much that they do it for free, as volunteer firefighters, while also working nine-to-five jobs.

And then there are the career firefighters. These are the 373,000 men and women who devote their livesand are willing to sacrifice their livesto strangers in peril. They worked hard to earn the uniform. They conquered steep odds: some departments are more exclusive than Ivy League schools. And they will likely remain firefighters for the rest of their working lives; in a fluid economy where most of the nation hops from job to job or career to career, firefighters remain firefighters.

Five hundred eighty-seven of these men and women battle fires in St. Louis. Its a proud department, a busy department, a storied departmentthe second-oldest in the United States, founded in 1857. I spent July of 2019 with this outfit, riding along on calls, sleeping in the bunk rooms, and shadowing firefighters during their twenty-four-hour shifts. For much of America, the concept of a work shift may be outdated, but for firefighters its foundational. You organize your life by those shifts. In St. Louis the shifts are twenty-four hours on, twenty-four hours off, twenty-four on, twenty-four off, twenty-four on, then four days off. Rinse and repeat.

Given the importance of this twenty-four-hour structure, this book is organized by following one slightly reconstructed twenty-four-hour shift in the St. Louis Fire Department, primarily from the perspectives of three firefighters: Ramon Strickland, twenty-five, a rookie regarded as one of the most respected newbies in the department; Battalion Chief Russ Richter, a thirty-two-year veteran who, according to a survey from Firehouse magazine, is the ninth-busiest battalion chief in the nation; and Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson, a third-generation firefighter and leader at the top of his field. Well also hear from firefighters like Captain Mario Montero, a leader of the specialized rescue squad, and Licole McKinney, one of the few female firefighters in the St. Louis Fire Department.