I have been an active member in our department for 17 years now, and I have already seen more things that I keep trying to make sense out of and just can’t.

About 3 months after finishing Essentials we were dispatched for an auto accident with entrapment and a vehicle fire. On arrival we had one victim out and the EMS crew was working on him across the road away from the vehicle. The second victim was still in the vehicle and you could hear him screaming in the car as the fire was put out. As I was putting on my gear my (now) ex-husband told me to stay at the car. I got so angry that I said “What the *@#% - I have to get used to this sooner or later; you can’t keep me from this forever.” And I finished getting my gear on.

Another member who had just finished Essentials and I were instructed by the Assistant Chief to take the hose line to the engine compartment and make sure that it didn’t flare back up. We were also told to take the rope we were handed and tie off the car. This being our first big auto accident, my partner and I just looked at each other and asked each other if we remembered any of the knots we’d just learned. Neither of us had a clue. We asked a senior member who was walking by to give us a hand and he did without even blinking an eye. His practiced technique?...The “lotta knot” - just keep tying a knot until it doesn’t undo.

We moved to the nozzle and stood by to protect the extrication. We watched as the Jaws were started and they proceeded to take the passenger side door and then the driver side. They removed the victim and transported him to the hospital. Once the victim was removed we were relieved of the hose and told to take a break at the back of the engine. This was the first time that I had a chance to just relax a little bit and that was when it really hit me, and I started to cry. The driver for the engine on whose tailboard I was sitting came over and asked if I was all right. I told him yes, but then it all just came in a flood of emotions…what just happened, and why did this have to happen, kept running through my head. As soon as I would get myself calmed down, sure enough one of the other senior members would ask me again and it would start all over again.

The Deputy Chief called for the county CISD team to come out and talk to us. I kept thinking about Essentials class and some of the training we had in-house with the Chief telling us that the Jaws of Life were the greatest tool that the fire service now had to help get the victim out quickly. It was at this call I realized just how slow the tools were. When we were told about the tools and how much faster they were than doing extrication with the hand tools, it gave us an unrealistic picture in our heads because we were never told that it still takes time.

This accident happened, as we found out later, because the driver was intoxicated. The victim in the car died at the hospital as a result of burns from the heat of the fire before we got there. The other victim survived but was missing an ear (which we were given the unpleasant task of looking for). We also had to herd some escaped, highly agitated cows back into the field where the car came to rest. This was just the first fatal accident I would go to involving alcohol.

The next one was a fatal also, which luckily only involved one vehicle. This was an underage girl who was at a bar being served alcohol. She went off the road onto a stone wall and rolled the car. She was deceased when we arrived. I had to go with another new member and search the area for another possible victim, because we were unsure if there was anyone else with her. That was the creepiest thing to have to do, because we had to search a field and barn near the accident. We weren’t sure what we were going to find and DEFINITELY didn’t want to find it. There wasn’t anyone to find, as it turned out. She was alone in the car. When we got back to the station we all kept asking how this girl was able to be served at the bar…it was frustrating to see a life cut short because of something that should never have happened.

And then came the last night of our carnival this past year, and an accident involving an underage kid (again) who was taken home because he had been drinking. The friends that took him home and put him to bed also took his set of keys so that he couldn’t get up and take his car and go back to the party. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize that he had a spare set, and the kid got in his car and drove the car into a tree. He was killed and we ended up being dispatched to his parents’ home and taking a family member to the hospital because of the emotional strain it put on him.

After I returned from the hospital I was furious, because here was a boy that was in my son’s Cub Scout den; for a short time I was even his den mother. He was a nice kid and my son was friends with him while in school and he did this really stupid thing. I wanted to know where the parents were, and how could they have let this happen. I was even more frustrated because just a few months earlier one of his friends died in an auto accident in a neighboring town…caused by alcohol. It hit home so much more because these boys are all the same age as my son, and I pray that I raised him not to do the same stupid things.

We had a debriefing a day or two later and as we discussed the call and how we felt, one of our younger members mentioned that the boy’s friends were all planning to get together the following weekend and have another party in his memory. I just lost it. What were they thinking? Why did this not hit home? Did some of the boys that ended up at the scene that night not get the reality of the situation? I pointed out that they acted like they HADN’T just had a friend of theirs killed because of the partying with alcohol (which NONE of the kids are legally able to drink ANYWAY), and that they think that they are invincible…I just don’t understand. Life is so precious and here are young kids throwing it away to go out and get drunk or high.

I keep going over and over in my head what can I do to get across to these kids that drinking and driving or doing drugs and getting behind the wheel is not right. I have said time and time again that the school needs to make their program more realistic. Stop showing slides and movies that don’t give the picture of the reality of it all. The presentation needs (unfortunately) to be more graphic, and also show that the end result is that they are not just harming themselves when they do this stuff.

Destructive behavior by teenagers (or anyone) affects a lot of people. It affects their family, their friends, the firefighters that have to remove them from the vehicle, the EMS crews that have to work on them or that have to help the moms and dads and even the friends that may be at the scene to cope with what happened. It also changes the lives of innocent people on the road, who often end up hurt or maimed or killed because of these individuals that don’t think or just don’t give a damn.

I have decided to try and figure out a way to put a program together and try to get it across to kids that are getting ready to drive or who may get into a car with kids that do drive and just get them to think about what they are doing and maybe, just maybe, it will help to keep these kids from killing themselves or somebody else. I remember being in 6th grade and going to school and my teacher being upset because a past student had been killed over the weekend along with five other teenagers in an accident. The five kids were in one car and they were going from one party to another. It was later estimated that they were traveling in excess of 95 miles an hour when they hit another girl head on.

She was on her way home from work, and had no time to react or try to get out of the way. They all were killed instantly. My dad was the medical examiner at the time and I can remember him being gone for hours that night, MUCH longer than usual.

I just don’t get it. Maybe because I never behaved that way when I was that age; I was raised differently. I just don’t know. All that I do know is that I will not give up what I am doing as a firefighter and EMT, because if I can make a difference in just one person’s life, then that is one person that I was able to help. So in the end maybe I am making some sense of all of this after all. But I know when we get the next accident where someone decides to drink and get behind the wheel, I’ll be back here again trying to make sense out of it. It seems to be a vicious cycle that will never end.