Thank a firefighter

It was January 2003 and my husband, Ronnie, called me at work.

Just before lunch my phone rang and I knew it was serious because he never called me during the day.

But I never expected what came next.

“Marta, this is gonna be a rough one,” he said. “Mem’s house is on fire.”

My grandparents lived on a narrow dirt road in East Penn Township.

They had been napping and awoke to smell smoke. My grandfather somehow managed to get my grandmother out the back door. She walked slowly because of a stroke and a sore leg from diabetes.

The temperatures hovered near zero.

Yet my grandfather guided my grandmother down the steep icy driveway safely to the neighbors.

Then it was our job to keep her from looking at her dream house that her father had built.

The volunteer firefighters worked for several hours to bring the blaze under control. It was cold, but they answered the call.

My grandparents lost everything except a few gifts that had not been put away from Christmas. There was “The Littlest Angel” video I had bought my grandmother for Christmas as well as a couple other things my grandfather threw out the door into the snow as he was bringing her to safety.

My grandmother was in shock and didn’t comprehend the seriousness of the situation. She looked at me and said, “I hope they can save the quilts.”

The quilts were her life’s work. They were the last ones she would make.

It was hours before she realized she didn’t even have a toothbrush, not to mention any ID. It’s difficult to get ID when you don’t have any to start with. They had to replace car keys that had melted.

To many, this is a just a story that happened to someone else. Unfortunately, it happens to someone every day.

Fire Prevention Week is a good time to realize that that someone can be us.

We often take things for granted, and that’s especially true of volunteer firefighters in our community.

A Mahoning firefighter told me the other day that he is one of several generations. He serves because it’s in his blood.

He’s one of many firefighters across our region who spend their free time training to fight fires. When the scanner goes, they go, with no compensation at all.

What if firefighters hadn’t shown up that day? What if there were no volunteers?

Talk about taking service for granted.

And it’s all for free.

Adams County, located in the southern part of the state, commissioned a fire funding study in 2013 that showed if departments paid their firefighters, the median salary would be $61,411 plus $34,000 in benefits.

A 2001 Pennsylvania Fire and Emergency Services Institute study found that volunteer fire service companies, on average, yielded about $6 billion in avoided costs to local governments.

A few years after my grandparents’ fire, my brother’s home caught fire in Whitney Point, New York. It was just as cold that day, worsened by lake effect snow.

I never experienced those raw temperatures until we traveled the next day to the outskirts of Binghamton to help my brother sort through the rubble.

Imagine how the firefighters felt.

Both of those fires were started by an electrical malfunction and probably couldn’t have been prevented.

This week, firefighters talked about what we can prevent. Volunteeers taught people best practices and what to do if a fire does break out in your home.

And you know what? These dedicated servants won’t even care if they talk themselves out of a job.

That’s because they care about people and they care about their community.

It’s Fire Prevention Week, but it should be “Thank a Firefighter Week.”

Marta Gouger is editor of the Times News. She writes a biweekly column about the Times News and the community it serves.