Stories From the Road: First Responder Stories

“I made the conscious decision that I wanted to put my family first, and that is – it’s so important in our profession that you do that, because you need to give your best at home and, you know, do your best to leave work at work, because your family at home needs you. When people said, ‘Oh, you’re crazy! You’re leaving all that money on the table – you’re leaving all that!’ I said, ‘You know what, I never had it. […] I’m taking a ...

“And the instant thought I had was, ‘I hope we don’t have catastrophic injuries. I hope we don’t have any deaths, because we are now on an island. The people to the west of us are being hit by this, people to the east of us are gonna be hit by this. To the south, to the north - they’re all being hit by this. We are on our own.’” – Coordinator Mindy

It’s been three years since the derecho swept through Iowa and, although th...

“It was a hard pill to swallow. And […] it was one of these deals that if you was gonna retire, you know, you got that retirement date, you go have your little retirement party and everybody pats you on the back. You get that proverbial gold watch and everything, you know, ‘Good job!’ and, you know, ‘Enjoy your retirement.’ And, like I say, I walked in the door […] that day and people never seen me again. I never walked back in the...

“I don’t care how long anybody has been doing this – when you hear that, it just creates something in you that is almost a feral response. You know, I don’t think that it’s something that you can even control – even if you are the most calm, salty, old-school firefighter and you’ve done it a thousand times – when you hear that, it just creates a reaction in you that’s just visceral.” – Captain Kara

The fire department’s al...

“You know we asked – I asked – ‘Hey, if you can send anybody from that other service we can get some mutual aid, and then if you can clear anybody out [of] the hospital, we have multiple children kind of on the ground ejected from a vehicle,’ and we – I – knew it was serious.” – Paramedic Josh

A sea of red taillights laid out before them, Josh and his colleague quickly realized that the New Orleans East interstate – usuall...

"In 2023, less than five percent of career firefighters are female. Despite all the efforts that we put in to make the fire service more diverse, we’re still at that. That’s only a one percent increase in the last 10 years. That’s not very good. So, it is still history, and it’s still important. Representation is extremely important. I didn’t even know females were firefighters until I was in my 20s – like I just thought men d...

“So, I never complain about anything anymore. I’m not sure I was really much of a complainer to begin with, but I don’t complain at all. I’m willing to roll with the punches with change. I am trying to create. I don’t feel like I’m the most creative person, but I’m trying to be better at it. […] So, if I could tell people what to do, you know to help them recover, I’d say find a routine. I think routine is something we all need eve...

“So, upon my arrival on that day, I stopped in the middle of a five-lane road and said, ‘This looks like a good place to be. I’m gonna stay here.’ I walked in to find uniforms, matching of mine, looking for command to say, ‘This is what we need to do.’ […] At that time that I finally got there, the kids had been moved from the high school into a church that was just a few blocks away, and we were trying to get the kids back to thei...

“. . .but it was the moment that I recognized I am not taking care of myself. I’m not taking care of my daughter. [...] I’m serving the population I wanna serve, but I’m doing it in a way that’s hurting me and hurting my relationships.” — Cop Shrink Deana

For 12 years, Deana the “Cop Shrink” has answered the calls of over 100 federal, state, and local agencies in need of therapy for their first responders. These men and women have e...

“They hit him with that Narcan, Mr. Blount jumped up like, it was like a Halloween thing.  The guy jumped up on the %*^# gurney and is throwing — he’s in withdraw — and he’s throwing up against the side of the wall like a fire hose.  And I’ll never forgot, the nurse goes, ‘Would you do that in your house?’” – Detective Vic

You’d be hard-pressed to make up a story involving a cast of characters known as Portuguese Elvis, Whiplash Wil...

"Like with first responders: 'Oh, what was the craziest call you've been on?' Like we don't wanna talk about that. We want to tell the fun stories. We want to tell, ‘Oh, this one day this happened, and it was funny!' Where I think a lot of people in our profession, they always forget to tell those fun stories to the regular civilian, and I think it's pretty important." – Officer Jay

A claymore...

“This is all right at the beginning of fire season, and my symptoms really escalated from that point on. I started being paranoid, a startle response, it was crazy.  I thought I was going crazy.”  - Chief Linda

The mid-September Saturday in 2015 seemed harmless enough. It was forecasted to be cloudy with low winds and high humidity – a reprieve from a hectic, relentless fire season. Linda had been the duty chief for most o...

“Seconds later, a male subject partially came out at the top of the stairwell. He was sweating profusely; his eyes were wide open with this glazed look literally staring straight through us.  And at this point we’re yelling, ‘Show us your hands! Show us your hands!’ and he had no visible reaction. I mean no facial expressions, I don’t remember his eyes blinking, no body movement.  I mean, literally, just staring straight through us...

“For a while there, that was my crutch. I just, I kept going back to the bar and I was reliving that call — at night, during the day – just trying to figure out what happened. What could I have done? What should we have done? Could we have done anything better for the people that were there when we were triaging them? When we were treating them? If other units had gotten there quicker? If we had gotten there quicker?" – Parame...

“While I’m sitting in this Dodge Caravan, a four-seven precinct van drives by and they give me – we call it the hairy eyebrow – like they give you a dirty look and I’m like %@#*!  If they run the plate on this car and it comes back stolen, they’re going to circle around. I’m not gonna be able to open the door cause there’s no panels. I’m not gonna be able to identify myself. It’s pitch black in here.  They’re going to pull me out o...

“I look at the EMT, and I’m trying to stay as calm as possible, because panic is probably the most contagious thing out there – I will argue that panic is the most contagious thing out there [...]. And I just look at him and say, ‘Hey, as soon as my partner walks over here, don’t jump out, don’t do anything, just open the door […] – he’ll see what’s going on.’  And he did, and I said, ‘Well Bill, this is where we are now.’” - Fligh...

“I remember shutting my locker door and then my intuition, my gut instinct, was that was the last time I was going to shut my locker, and I had this like really uneasy feeling of, ‘Ooh, that was really weird. Why did I think that?’ Because that’s not normally a thought that would come to my mind.” – Paramedic Nick

You signed up for this. It’s a phrase that seems to be pervasive among fire departments and police stations across the c...

“We meet so many people in a single shift and, after a while, it does accumulate, but we may be the only first responders someone sees, let alone the last person they see or the last voice they hear on this earth.” - Paramedic Alexis

Flower petals and stems lay strewn about the seats of the car Alexis was photographing – along with brain matter and blood. Her eyes scanned the car’s mangled interior, and she wondered how t...

“It was a really unique situation because this girl was actually carrying – as a surrogate – the baby for her sister who couldn’t have children, so this was like a super important pregnancy. It had to succeed.” - Chief Scott

Twenty-five years. Fifty deliveries. Three weeks. Three new babies.

Many first responders find that obstetric emergencies are more often studied in the classroom than experienced on the job and, when th...