Q: What Was Your Worst Call?

(Squad) My first call with the squad was an unconcious/unresponsive in the summer of 2010. The ambulance responded with 4 people, and myself and 2 other members responded in our support vehicle. When we arrived on scene, we came across approx. 12 people standing outside the house, 2 of them (which i knew) said "He's in the attic, please hurry!" We grabbed our gear and rushed up the steps into the attic. We found a 20ish year old male laying on the bed; head hanging off the side, completely blue, a stream of blood from his nose to a pool on the floor. He'd been there over night in 90 degree weather, needless to say he was pronounced on scene. This diddnt bother me (well, it did, but you understand what i mean) what bothered me is the father's reaction, he was on the floor screaming "please dont take my baby boy, he's all i have!" I still to this day remember the faces standing around the house, the layout of the house, the deceased boy, and the father's voice.

(Fire) My worst call with the fire department was a motor vehicle accident that occured on June 6th, 2010. I was just a junior firefighter at the time and had just gotten home from a vacation when our tones dropped, "98 fire 98 rescue alert; Respond to the intersection of ********* and ************ for a MVA truck vs SUV head on, confirmed entrapment, 1 party unconcious/unresponsive." I got to the fire house and the first engine, crash van and brush truck were gone. My lieutenant had our second engine out waiting for more man power, so i ran into the station, geared up and hopped into the officers seat. My LT called our chief up on the radio and told him we had 2 standing by and chief requested we respond out to the field right next to the accident (there was a little league softball game going on which we stopped until the helicopters took off) to set up an LZ. We called into county responding (keep in mind we have about a 6-8 min ride to the LZ site) and their reply was "Engine 62, be advised the ETA for your copter is approx 10 mins."  So we arrived on scene and the copter was overhead as soon as i put the last cone down. After the copter landed, chief called us and requested an additional LZ for another patient. My LT and I expanded the LZ and the first patient was loaded into the helicopter and they took off (i later learned he coded in the helicopter on the way). After the second helicopter took off, we were reassigned to block off the road. We were on scene for approx 4 hours. To my knowledge, neither driver survived.