OF MICE AND MEN
BY BILL MANNING
She was distraught, it was said, over her relationship with her boyfriend. So on a September afternoon, she tried to run her car off the Tappan Zee Bridge, a large span over the Hudson River in New York State. Unsuccessful but undeterred, the woman bolted from the vehicle and jumped over the side–a 130-foot drop.
Dan Santos, driving behind the woman, saw it happen. He ran to the spot from which the woman had disappeared; located her in the river; and, without hesitation, jumped in to save her life.
Even in this most jaded part of the world, where calamity is commonplace, someone else would have stopped and called 9-1-1 and would have waited for firefighters and police. A by-the-book rescue–or recovery–operation would have followed. The woman, critically injured from the long fall, quite likely would have drowned, her mission accomplished.
But, something clicked inside Dan Santos that day–something that springs from deep down–from the soul.
Firefighter Dan Santos of the Spring Valley (NY) Volunteer Fire Department landed about 10 feet from the victim. The fall rendered him unconscious for a brief moment. When he regained his senses, he grabbed the woman and hung on, treading water for dear life–for both of them.
As luck would have it, boaters on the shore, several hundred yards away, spotted the commotion and headed toward the water-bound victim and rescuer. Both were taken to the hospital. Santos required a few days of treatment and was released.
The incident received considerable television coverage, tabloid headlines, and radio talk show commentary. To many, Santos was a hero. But others, particularly of the radio phone-in crowd, reacted with incredulity and even outrage. He was described as “crazy” and “dangerous.” One volunteer firefighter said on the radio: “The fire department safety officer should pin a medal on his chest and then suspend him. What he did was against everything we`re trying to teach about safety.”
Fortunately, most firefighters are not called on to jump 130 feet into the water–indeed, a very dangerous action. In fact, Santos is a very lucky man. He is also a hero. In a split second, he made a decision about the situation and the risk. In a split second, he knew what he had to do, being who he is.
In a split second, he showed the courage that has marked the fire service for 200 years and why special people with special skills and special hearts and not Joe Citizen are entrusted with the sometimes awesome task of emergency response.
Sometimes the difference between life and death is a matter of instantaneous reaction, not calculated risk analysis or calling in the cavalry and setting up the incident command system.
Would it have been different if Santos had been walking down the street in his civvies and ran into a burning house to save a child? Our fire service safety surgeons would place the incident under the microscope, dissect it into a million pieces, run safety biopsies, and determine that they had better cut this cancer out of the fire service for good. Or our safety overlords would pin the medal on him for show–showing off their arrogant condescension–but then send him to the time-out corner for ill-behaved children.
Yes, heroes will be criticized in this fire service. It is 1996, after all. Safety correctness (a subset of PC) is in full force. Even so, you can teach safe practices, but you cannot unteach or bridle heroism. Sometimes the safety book is so much psychobabble when it`s a split second–not splitting hairs–that counts in pursuing the first fire service priority .
A man jumped off the equivalent of a 13-story building. It was a jump for life. That man is a hero, and in my heart I am jumping with him. I`ll take one good Dan Santos over a thousand safety doctors who have run so afoul of the mission that they`re slowly but surely brainwashing the next generation of firefighters in their great laboratory safety experiment. Are they mice, or men?
Thank God for the Dan Santoses of the fire service who have the mettle to stand up tall for life, duty, and the profession.