From the Publishers Desk
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Natural Disasters: a Big Part Of a Fire Fighter’s Job
Snow is falling as we write this in the second week of March and we have almost given up all hope that this winter will ever end for us Easterners and the Midwesterners. It seems hard to believe, as we look out our window that there are snow piles—congealed ice piles actually—on the sidewalks of midtown Manhattan. And that these piles have been there since early January.
A rough winter for us civilians, you might say, what with the cold, winds, snow, delayed trains or no trains and the countless other irritations and frustrations that a record winter brings. But what about the fire fighters, who had all the trials and tribulations of civilians, plus their job? A job that took them out in bitter cold, howling blizzards and even into the rough surf of the icy Atlantic Ocean.
We are thinking here of the big blizzard of February 6 which roared up the Atlantic Coast from Virginia to Maine, striking savagely at New York and Boston. It was something else again, as we watched (on TV) fire fighters in the Boston area wade hip deep in a rough, icy ocean to rescue citizens from their shore homes that were in imminent danger of being swept away. Another picture that still comes vividly to mind is that of a fire company stretching, or rather threading, a line through downed electrical wires that were still whipping and sparking. We are sure that there were countless other incidents involving fire Fighters which were just as dramatic and dangerous.
If there is a common thread running through these incidents brought on by these wintry emergencies, it is that most of them did not involve fire.
Yet all fire departments—manpower and equipment—are established and funded on the basis of the number and frequency of fires. Perhaps the city fathers should pay more attention to the demands of natural disasters—including the rains and mudslides of Southern California which had fire fighters working to the point of exhaustion.
