Honoring the Worcester Heroes

Fifteen children from Worcester will be without fathers this Christmas. These men died Friday night, fighting a fire in a vacant building, searching for victims who weren't there. Four of them were double-saviors, answering a may-day call, going into the building with safety lines strapped to their backs.

A year ago, in this same space, I wrote a light-hearted piece about being a fire buff. An interlocuter wrote back to The Crimson that I overstated the job's romance and understated the danger. He was right.

As a buff, I watched the Associated Press wire Friday night as word of two deaths, and then four more, reached news reporters.

I remembered a fire in Boston last year. A three-story boarding house was burning, and firefighters were trying to save the homes of several families. Two members of truck company walked up a set of smoky stairs to stretch a hose line to the second floor. Suddenly, they yelled a may-day. A ladder was brought to the second floor--quickly--and the firefighters escaped. They barely escaped injury. And the panic in their voices sticks with me today. This was a "normal" fire--an everyday happening for the men in uniform.

Firefighting remains one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Every day, at least 120 firefighters are injured in this country alone.

What can citizens do to help make the job safer? Simple things, like making sure lamps aren't close to curtains, checking batteries on smoke detectors and observing fire alarms.

Most of us do these things. Some of us don't. It probably would make a difference if we did. Tragically, none of these things would have saved Jeremiah Lucey, Lt. Thomas Spencer, Timothy Jackson, Joseph McGuirk, James Lyons and Paul Brotherton. The Worcester Fire may be have been started by an arsonist, though it's still to early to tell. The firefighters entered an old factory--a maze of stairs and doors and walls--to try to find a group of homeless people allegedly living there.

It turns out that no one was there. Nothing was there but the impulse to save a life.

The Worcester fire so cruelly deprived five families of their fathers, six wives of their husbands and a community of its heroes so close to a joyous religious holiday.

All I can say is this: If you're awakened by a fire alarm at 6 a.m. tomorrow and the fire trucks arrive at your door, go to the firefighters and tell them "thanks." I don't what effect the words will have on those ever-present protectors, but I suspect, at a time when they grieve for their brothers in the fire service, a sincere acknowledgement will provide great comfort.