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Permalink Reply by Bob Callahan on October 18, 2012 at 3:01pm

Depends on if it's a Line of death, or in your case, a member who passes unrelated to a call or line of duty incident. It also depends on how involved the family wants the fire department in the funeral.

 

We have had one LODD in this department since I was involved. The brother was Moron, and he was creamated, so the only "event' was the service itself.

 

We attended the service, and read the fireman's prayer. Since I was the closest member to him, I was asked to participate in the Eulogy, along with a family member and a friend.

 

At the end of the service, I led a department role call. All the unit nuumbers of the attending members were called, and they acknowledged present after it was called. Alan's number was saved for the end. WWhen his was called, a member stood up and read "Unit 93 has gone to heavn".

 

We have had several none line of duty deaths as well. We attended and particiopated in the ceremony. delivering eulogys, and escorted the funeral procession and carried the casket to the graveside. 

 

 

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Permalink Reply by ashfire on October 19, 2012 at 10:26pm

Most funerals I have attended were LODD, someone big in the dept or someone I knew.

Usually most times for the funeral, depts have units sent to intersections for the procession to close the intersection to traffic until the last units passes and then the unit can join the procession or return to quarters.

I have also attended the viewings with a fire dept service conducted by the fire dept chaplin.

I can remember some of the funerals. One for the county career fire chief back in the 70s we stood in our PPEs with our engine. The funeral for  a man that been the chaplin for both our county and the state and past president of our county fire and rescue association at the same time. It was the longest funeral because of the number of fire companies that attended plus a fly over by state police helicopter.

 I attended two funerals processions  the same day for LODD of the pilot and a Fire Dept EMT that had been on a State Police Medivac helicopter which crashed also killing  the copter medic and a patient. One patient survived. I stood with another dept at a intersection who only had two firefighters on the unit to help block the roadway. Both were long processions with fire and police units from many areas.

One funeral procession was a LODD for a young fighter that brought a child out of a house fire and then went back in. The child died from result of the fire and the firefighter became trapped in the fire and died. It was in Janurary and the day for the funeral was the coldest day. Our crew was going to stand in our PPEs but someone said we had to stand in our uniforms as the procession past. Sure enough we stood in our uniforms until the last unit past which was close to 10 minutes. By the time we got to the grave site there was no room in the cemetery for units and the street was closed for all the units to park. But the grave side service was finished before everyone got there.

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Permalink Reply by Kaitlin Reick on October 20, 2012 at 1:00am

Today was the funeral and I forgot in my last post about our last call which we coordinate with dispatch which today and for others it goes

*Tones*

"Attention Clarkson Fire and Rescue

Colfax county to Clarkson 408(or other) Colfax county to 408

This is the last call for Clarkson 408

On behalf of Colfax county and the community of Clarkson after 51 years of great service to the Clarkson Fire and Rescue Harlan Hamernik(or whomever) we are retiring you for your last call 

Thank you for your service"

Down at our station someone sends a blast of our town's siren.

All this while we stand at attention and make a line for the family of the deceased to file past. Today the family involved our chief, first assistant chief, and a lieutenant. Our second assistant chief did the proceedings for our service.

I stayed pretty strong during the service only because Harlan was well-known around the community, Nebraska, the nation and the world for his work as a horticulturalist and he always, always, always treated me nice, but it was hard to not cry when they did the last call. HIs end was brought on by a fire at his home where he was severely burned and I worked at that fire cooling the firemen down from our community and the neighboring community and doing crowd control.

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