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In my lifetime I have had the occasion to experience close contact with the fire department or other emergency services many times. In each of these situations, having the fire department or other emergency services show up was a Godsend.

I didn’t get off to a good start as a young boy because the fire department had to show up and fix something I had created. I was just six years old when I and a neighbor boy decided that the best way to see a fire truck with the firemen hanging onto the back of the firetruck like we saw in books was to start a fire. My accomplice had access to matches because his mom smoked. With matches in hand, we walked next door to the neighbors and attempted to start a small fire. We were quite unsuccessful in the beginning and quickly used up all the matches he had taken from his mother. Unfortunately, snooping on the neighbors back porch paid off when we found another package of wooden stick matches.

We knew that a fire would need dry wood to fuel it, so we leaned our little modified campfire against their single car garage. Once the fire was going we took off to disconnect ourselves from the fire we just started. Over a couple of fences, across the street and through a couple of back yards had us successfully walking into the back door of my house just as the firetruck was coming down Center Street hill. With the firemen working on the blaze we started, we took the time to play on the firetruck.

What we couldn’t foresee, because of our age, was that the bone-dry boards on the garage created such a huge blaze the fire jumped from the garage to the back of the house. The size and scope of the damage quickly turned us away from being curious to being full-fledged arsonists. Clearly this was an event that we wanted to separate ourselves from, so plan “B” was to never tell anyone what we had done. That worked for about ten minutes before Roger, my helper and co-conspirator, told his mom that we had started the fire. That could have gone south quickly except that his mom didn’t believe him, and the matter was dropped.

For several years after this happened I was terrified that every time I heard sirens in the background I would hide because I was sure they were coming to get me and throw me in jail.

Another fire I started but wasn’t responsible for happened at a gas station and repair shop I was working at while attending college. The owner was kind enough to allow employees to do work on their own vehicles so long as the other work was done. One Saturday afternoon where I followed the owner’s brother for the late shift, I brought my motorcycle into the shop to do some repairs on the kickstand. Using a torch to cut away the old weld caused sparks to scatter across the shop floor. This wouldn’t be an issue except that during the morning shift, the owner’s little brother had been working on his boat.

One of the steps he took was to empty all the old gasoline from his tank. Unfortunately, the gasoline went into the floor drain in the middle of the shop. Gasoline is lighter than water so instead of the gas being flushed away, it gathered inside the recessed floor drain. Sparks scattered by the torch tumbled into the floor drain. An out-of-control fire at a gas station isn’t something to be messing with but to my good fortune, weeks before this happened I had encouraged the owner to re-charge the fire extinguisher that had been used several years earlier. I was able to get the fire out quickly, but it could have been ugly.

Just last week we had some similar excitement in our cul-de-sac. I was playing with my granddaughters in the front yard when my neighbor approached me with a concerned look on her face. My fear was that her husband who was elk hunting had fallen ill or worse. Thankfully, that wasn’t the issue, but the concern didn’t leave her face. I followed her to the side of the house that sits between our two homes where she pointed out moderate smoke pouring from the eaves of our neighbor’s house. There were no flames visible, but we know that where there is smoke, there is bound to be fire.

We pounded on the front door not being sure if anyone was home and I went so far as to open the front door and yell “is anyone home’. This really aggravated their little dogs which used the occasion to snap at the foot I was using to keep the dogs inside the house. With nobody home and a second visit to the side of the house where the smoke was we decided to call the fire department. To our great relief, almost instantly after calling 911 we heard the firetruck coming. There is no better sound on this earth that is nicer to hear than that of EMS vehicles coming to your aid when time matters.

I’m quite sure that no more than three minutes passed from the time I hung up the phone with the 911 center and the firetruck rolled up on scene. Apparently they had been on their way to a lift assist and were able to divert right to our fire. Assessing the scene, one of the firemen discovered the source of the fire being in the deck right next to the back door. A chainsaw to the deck revealed the source of the fire and it was quickly extinguished.

The Hero of the day, other than the Burley Fire Department, was our neighbor who saw smoke and did something about it. Sometimes people are reluctant to call 911 for fear that what they are seeing isn’t that big of a deal, but that’s exactly what needs to happen. It would be much better for EMS to get on scene and find nothing than it would be to wish you had called sooner when the situation spirals out of control.

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