By Heather Killen
The Spectator
NovaNewsNow.com
A scorched graduation photo may be a small gesture in a hundred unpaid hours of fire fighting, but it means the world to a father.
Fire departments across the county are hoping that more community-minded people will volunteer to run out on their family dinners and get calls from a pager in the middle of the night seeking help for strangers and neighbours.
They’ll also ask these good-hearted people to give up some of their evenings and their weekends to wash trucks, fundraise for hoses, and teach their neighbours about fire safety. In return for all of these unpaid hours, volunteers will have the real satisfaction of knowing they’ve helped their communities and joined a close-knit team.
Part Of A Team
Michelle Wood-Durling and Brooke Crouse are the only two women in the team of nearly 40 Bridgetown and area volunteer firefighters. Both say they’ve always wanted to be firefighters and neither would trade the opportunity they have to serve their community.
Wood-Durling said she got hooked on the idea of joining the fire service after watching the dramatic saves made by Roy DeSoto and John Gage on Emergency, the 1970s television show featuring the famous paramedic team of Los Angeles County Fire Dept. Station 51.
When Wood-Durling finally joined Bridgetown’s team seven years ago, she was their first female member. She said she started in the radio room and has held various jobs since. She’s trained as a first responder and can now work around the various trucks and complicated equipment as easily as she starts her own mini-van.
Crouse is the newest member of the team, with only a month of experience. When she isn’t volunteering with the fire department, she is a student at Kingstec, she works at The End of Line Pub and she does other volunteer work.
Grandfather’s Footsteps
She says the first thing she wanted to do when she turned 18 was to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps and sign up for the fire department.
“I remember when I was little, stepping into my grandfather’s big boots at the Lawrencetown fire hall,” said Crouse. “When I finally got to wear my own gear on a call, I couldn’t wait to get it off. I had it on for two hours, it was very heavy.”
Both women say they don’t mind the erratic times they can be called to an emergency. And both say that while at first it was a little intimidating to take on a role that has been held by men for so long, they both feel at ease in the job.
“I’ve only been here a month and they treat me with the same respect they treat every other member,” says Crouse.
Wood-Durling agreed saying that becoming a volunteer fire fighter has been a rewarding experience for her and she loves the opportunity to learn new skills. She added that she hopes her daughters, aged 12 and 17, will one day follow in her boots.
Team Effort
“It’s knowing that you helped save someone’s life, or property,” she said “And everybody brings something to the table. It’s a team effort, everybody has something to offer.”
Unlike the 1970s television show, the dramatic life and limb rescues are often more like a lot of little saves that add up to make a big difference. Every week volunteer firefighters spend hours just checking and maintaining equipment.
“I remember when I was little, stepping into my grandfather’s big boots at the Lawrencetown fire hall. When I finally got to wear my own gear on a call, I couldn’t wait to get it off. I had it on for two hours, it was very heavy.” - Brook Crouse
They also spend countless hours fundraising to purchase this equipment. But this equipment saves lives and the time it takes for a firefighter to verify that a breathing apparatus is working properly could pay off in the precious minutes needed to save someone’s life.
Having the chance to help others and save lives is the main reason they join the service, according to Wood-Durling. She added that it’s not one or two people that come to the rescue it takes a team effort to save a home, or a life.
And it’s not just the structure that matters. Whenever possible during a house fire, the fire chief sends in volunteers to specifically save personal items such as photographs, she added.
Case In Point
This case in point was made about 15 minutes later when both women, along with other members of the Bridgetown, Lawrencetown and Annapolis Royal fire departments, were called to fight a structure fire.
One quarter of the Bridgetown home, owned by Patrick and Elizabeth Akrigg, was engulfed in flames by the time firefighters arrived on the scene, shortly before 5 p.m. on February 3. Firefighters cut a ventilation hole in the roof and wore breathing masks in order to fight the fire from the inside and out.
Thanks to the quick response, the Water Street house is salvageable according to its owner Patrick Akrigg. Investigators believe that a misplaced nail that was driven in the wall years ago probably set off the blaze. Fortunately this electrical fire started during the daylight hours when people were home, awake and able to save the century-old home.
The couple moved here last year from England, shipping their personal belongings separately. While appliances and televisions can be replaced with money, the truly precious items are the special mementos collected over a lifetime.
Personal Touch
“We had family pictures hung on the wall upstairs, you can’t replace those,” he said. “The only one that was damaged was my daughter’s graduation picture, it’s a bit scorched on the back. I imagine someone plucked that picture off a burning wall.”
He added the firefighters pushed the furniture into the corners and protected it with tarps. It was a chilly afternoon for standing around outside and when his wife mentioned that she was cold, one of the firefighters went in and brought them hats, scarves, and mittens from the mudroom.
“I can’t express in words how I feel about what they did,” said Akrigg. “To see people go in there and risk their lives to save our belongings. There just aren’t words to describe that.
“The next day when we met them at the fire hall the fire chief, Randy Sheridan, apologized to us because the fire hall was in a mess,” he said. “I thought you have no reason to apologize. The reason it’s in a mess is because you saved our house yesterday.”
For more information on becoming a volunteer firefighter, contact the nearest community fire hall.
