First Responders in Crisis

In March of '97,

I'm sleeping on my bed at seven o'clock with a pager,

and that alerts us to fires.

And at seven o'clock,

I hear the dispatcher's voice come over,

toning us out for a building fire with people trapped.

And I'm three months into being 18

and I'm still not sure of myself as a firefighter.

And I get that lump, first time I get a lump, I go,

"Oh, God, people trapped, I'm gonna have to go in

and pull someone out of a building.

I hope it's not a kid."

So, I-- I take off out of my house,

I run across the common

and I get to the firehouse

and-- and I'm shaking right now because I-- I could feel it.

So, we get there, the house is fully involved.

I can see it from the road, it's a hundred-foot driveway,

flames 50 feet in the air.

Uh, I get my-- I get my job, my task,

getting off the truck, I get to the back of the truck

to pull the big hose line off.

They pull up the driveway, and then I follow behind them.

As I get up to the-- even with the house and the driveway,

I see what appears to be a lump of blankets

being carried past me.

It was not a lump of blankets.

It was a woman who was in the building

and as they get to my shoulder, I-- I smell it.

And it's a smell I cannot get rid of.

And as that goes by me and I realize what it is,

it is a body,

I look, and there's an older gentleman,

the co-- one of the cops is with him by the garage

and he's bleeding from his wrists,

and he's, like, 82 years old.

And I'm like, "What the fuck is going on?

What did I just walk into?"

And then we still don't know where the chief is,

or at least I don't,

and I look and the chief comes diving out of the window

that they just pulled the woman out of

and flames come out right after him.

And this is all in a matter of, like, 15 seconds.

That was my first fatal fire.

So the day gets over, we get relieved.

Um, we're told by the senior officer on scene, "Go home."

Because two of us were very young, we're brand new.

"Go home."

Well, I walk into the bathroom.

We had Pert Plus for shampoo

and we all-- anyone who knows what Pert Plus is

knows what it smelled like and I was huffing it.

I took almost a quarter of a bottle of it

and just drove it into my nose

and I'm sitting in the fetal position in my bathtub

just huffing Pert Plus trying to get rid

of the smell of a burnt old lady

that I never thought I was gonna smell.

That was three months into my-- my career.

I didn't even graduate high school yet.

What they do is they bring everyone who was on scene,

especially first on scene, into this.

So, there were some cops,

there were some EMTS that were there,

and there was, the truck I was on,

all members of that and a few other firefighters.

And basically, um...

it was asked, "All right, so you guys were here at this call,

someone died, uh.

You guys want to talk about how that affected you?

You wanna share some feelings?"

And of course, it's a room full of all men

and, as I remember it, not one person shared anything.

And I may be slightly incorrect with that,

but the one thing I do remember,

and it sticks out with me to this day,

is at one point, the guy running that was like,

"Okay, guys, well, coffee and donuts in the back."

Every first responder has the one call

that sticks with them.

It's true for Keith Hanks,

and it's true for his fellow firefighters,

police officers, and EMTS in rural towns in Massachusetts

and its neighboring communities.

I think my second fire was a fatal fire.

That's 18 years old. Getting off the truck.

Didn't think any of it then, but I can still remember...

that day.

It was a four-year-old girl who was struck by a car.

She was dragged 62 feet.

Her whole family was there.

We literally had to pry her from her grandfather's arms,

and that whole scene and the chaos

and it just happened to be a busy day.

A lot of people in front of a restaurant,

so, um,

a lot of people watching us, you know,

drag this poor child out, so.

And I made the mistake of looking at her eyes,

and that's a big no-no, so, um,

that's the call that-- that stuck with me.

And as soon as I walked in, I noticed a table

and there was a shell casing from a 40 caliber

and the smell of gunpowder was in the air mixed with blood.

I can still see the--

the boy who succumbed to his injuries' face.

An elderly lady hit a trailer truck head on.

She was, you know, dead at the scene.

The floorboards in the car just crumpled up

and were, like, all around her leg.

Quadruple homicide.

And it was kind of shocking

seeing that hatred and damage

that one family member did to another.

The shit that was happening, the calls we were going to,

the murders I was going to.

The rapes...

the domestics, the women I was seeing getting beaten.

I found all three kids,

and I pulled the only one that survived out myself.

And we realized, "Oh, shit,

we just walked into an active crime scene."

There was a person around the corner

that was tied and executed.

No police, no fire, no one's with us except for us.

It was probably over two and a half to three years,

but I had multiple suicides

and multiple high critical incidents.

And one of my firefighter's high school friends

shot himself with a rifle in a bathtub.

Watching people die, like,

how do you process that when you're 19 years old?

Becoming a first responder often means

pursuing the family business,

or it's the next step after leaving the military.

Or, in many instances, it's both,

a lifetime path laid at an especially young age.

My family is, uh,

military and firefighter based

dating back all the way to 1875.

Uh, so, a lot of my earliest memories growing up

were seeing my--

my family, my-- my mother's side of the family,

which was all I really had in my life,

um, running out the door going to-- going to emergencies.

Yeah, my dad was-- actually,

he was a firefighter in the Air Force,

and then he was on-call firefighter

in Townsend for 17 years.

So, I used to go, and I was, like, the--

the gofer who'd go get all the guys a beer

out of the fridge

and, uh, I'd, you know, hang out at the stations.

Then when I was 18, I decided

that's what I want to do, give it a shot.

My whole family was either police,

fire, or EMS at some point.

Father was in the military for 25 years,

three time Vietnam vet.

Uh, every day seeing him in his uniform when I was younger,

I could remember he wore it with such pride.

I mean, the main reason why I chose the fire service

is 'cause I had a friend in the Marines,

one of my best friends who I'm still in touch with now,

who joined the Baltimore Fire Department.

I went in the Navy right out of high school.

When I got out, I joined the, uh,

Townsend Fire Department as a call member.

Started in the military.

I was actually in the third Ranger Battalion

for a brief period,

uh, had some combat experience there.

Honestly, um, it was kind of my dad's fault.

Got a phone call from the dispatch center,

they needed an ambulance

over on the next street over for a car accident.

My dad looks at me, I'm 16 years old,

he looks at me and says, "You want to come with me to help?"

I'm like, "Sure."

And from there I was kind of hooked.

Mm-hm.

Oh, yes.

I'm sure nobody would like to admit that he did, but--

He didn't talk about anything.

"We don't talk about it."

"Oh, Dad, what was that?" "We're not talking about that."

"Okay."

Yes. Very much so.

- It was what I knew. - Yeah.

I knew what to expect.

It was something, like, a safety net.

He had seen some awful, awful things

and I remember,

I think it was one Christmas eve,

we were coming home from a Christmas party,

and there was a call and he thought, you know,

"It's a car accident. I'll just go real quick.

I'm gonna leave you two in the car."

It was just me and my oldest son,