THE BEDFORD FIRE DEPARTMENT – OUR HEROES Fighting fires and performing rescues are heroic and selfless acts of altruism that many of us cannot even imagine undertaking. Yet, firemen willingly engage in both on a daily basis. While their actions are the stuff of true heroes reveled about in dynamic action movies, we tend to watch the “real thing” on the nightly news as if it were commonplace, expected, normal … “no big deal”.
Those of us who have been on the other end of these so called “commonplace” incidents know that they are anything but “normal”. So too are these brave men and women who perform these critical jobs so that you and I can remain in that cozy, unconcerned place on the other end of the television – fully engrossed in the intricacies of our “normal” lives.
But the job of facing danger and responding in a calculated and effective manner takes training. So, on the night of January 23, 2006, the Bedford (NH) Fire Department performed a simulation of a brutal two car accident involving a person (test dummy) in a pickup truck and, strangely enough, a pig in minivan. The reason for the pig … well, true flesh and blood. This provided an accurate representation of a crash victim imprisoned in a crushed vehicle. And with that, our heroes proceeded to extract these poor souls from the wreckage using new state-of the-art equipment and more than just an average dose of commitment.
They took this exercise very seriously as these images will attest. Anyone privileged enough to observe this, couldn’t help but be enormously proud to live in a country where citizens are so valued that the standards and commitment to protect them are second to none.
God Bless America … and of course, Our Heroes.
