1 week Ago
Experience can be the worst teacher. I say so because although I had a career in the fire service that I loved deeply, there is one experience that taught me more than all of the courses I have taken combined. That experience would be firefighters funerals caused by line of duty deaths.
Of the many I attended, they all had at least this in common; a grieving widow, holding the hands of young children, following a flag draped coffin, as the song amazing grace played on bagpipes, while those of us in uniform saluted. When I reached the top of my profession the members of my department increased the number of calls they went on by 300%. The rest of our nation did likewise after 9/11.
Each and every type of call they went on meant more training and an increase in the likelihood that they too could be killed in the line of duty. It is because of these things that in 10 years and five contracts I never argued against a pay raise or benefit for a firefighter. The bottom line is this.
.. firefighters need and deserve excellent pay and benefits.
Offering them anything less is simply unconscionable. Chief Charles A. Teale, Sr.
(ret.), Hartford Fire Department.
