This week is Fire Prevention Week.
That makes it the perfect time to reflect on just who our local firefighters are and what they do day and night to keep us safe.
Being a small community, our firefighters are not professionals whose only job it is to fight fires.
Instead, they’re volunteers whose only real reward for the danger they put themselves in is the satisfaction of the job well done and the gratitude of a thankful community.
In effect, the words of Sir Winston Churchill are perhaps appropriate here: “Never … was so much owed by so many to so few.”
In most every community in the county, there is a volunteer fire department whose task it is to put out fires and deal with many other emergencies as they arise. It’s a dangerous job, but all members know what they’re getting into.
They expect they may be torn from their warm beds at two in the morning when it’s 35 C below zero. It may not be what they’d like to be doing at that hour, but they get up and rush to the fire hall, knowing their discomfort is minimal compared to that of the people they may be being called to help.
They’re also no different from you or me. They have families and jobs and their own personal interests.
If you were to see them on the street, there would be nothing about them that screams that they were firefighters.
It’s that air of commonality that makes who they are and what they do so noble.
They’re just regular people who have decided they want to help others by literally putting themselves in the line of fire.
And it’s because they’re all just regular people at the end of the day that the recent and unexpected death of Pickardville fire chief Colin Calkins hits so close to home. He was on vacation not even two weeks ago when he died.
He was an ordinary man who chose to live an extraordinary life, devoting years of service to his community.
On behalf of the entire community, we say thank you to all volunteer firefighters
