Tragedy Is Missed Opportunity On Fire

Origianally Posted January 5, 2003

Well a Happy New Year to everyone. Sorry to those of you that we might have said we were going to spend it with at one time or another. We have, in the last few days developed quite a significant leak in the basement. Anytime it rains we seem to get water in the basement. Christmas Eve, for instance, I came home after working all night on Engine 2 hoping to get a little sleep that morning before going over to Paula's father's house for Christmas celebration #1. Instead I found water in the basement and by five o'clock that afternoon had vacuumed over 200 gallons out with a wet/dry vac. It was coming so fast at one point the vacuum couldn't keep up. As irony would have it New Year's Eve was spent in a similar manner only with not quite so much water.

We hope everyone's holiday was a good one. We enjoyed all of ours including Christmas #'s 1, 2, 3, and 4.

The quote on the first page is my own. That makes two in a row and I am sorry for that but the current one was something that hit me in the last few days while I was pondering a call we went on New Year's Day. A man, a father, died in the house with his three grown children. There we were the night of New Year's Day doing CPR and all of the time the children seemed disturbingly calm considering the situation. And as I'm doing compressions on this man, who I think was somewhere around fifty years old, I'm thinking, "1...2...3...4...5...they don't know...1...2...3." And I was right. After it was over and the doctor on the phone gave us the okay to stop CPR it finally hit the children and they got it; he wasn't coming back.

And that's when the bomb went off. Not a real bomb but you would swear you heard it ticking had you been there. And once this bomb goes off there isn't any way to undo it. There's nothing you can say or do, so you do what you would with any bomb; you run away.

Now we're standing outside the apartment at the ambulance waiting for the police to show up, as is required by law, and I'm thinking, "What a damn tragedy. This sucks." The word "tragedy" kept going through my head and I started to think about how we use words all of the time that we don't mean or don't really apply to situations, but "tragedy" was appropriate in this instance. Still, I couldn't help examining why this was a tragedy. What makes this tragic? Sure it's sad but why tragic? And as I was writing the report back at the station it hit me: Tragedy is missed opportunity on fire.

The children had told us that their father had been feeling chest pain for about a week but hadn't seen a doctor. That's the missed opportunity. But unlike some missed opportunities that may come around again this one wouldn't. That's the "on fire." I say "on fire" for two reasons. First the opportunity to have seen a doctor in this instance is like a building that is lost in a fire, there is the obvious loss of building and contents just as the opportunity is lost. But there is something else that comes with fires; spectators. People watch when things burn. People see the missed opportunity or "tragedy" in all of its blazing glory. These children not only had to deal with their father's ill-fated decision not to see a doctor but people, like us, will know he might still be alive if he had seen a doctor and some might say, "what did you expect?" And that's the tragedy because I don't think this man expected to die.

Anyway be thankful in the New Year for what you have. Count your blessings. The most you can hope for this year is to not repeat some of the mistakes of last year.