I work at the Wilton YMCA as the camp and sports director and been there for about 15 years. I grew up in Ridgefield from when I was 5 until my mid-20s. In high school some of my friends were in the fire department. I always thought it was interesting but never had time to join. It wasn’t until I was a Junior in college at CCSU… when I transferred to Westconn, where I could live with my parents and commute to the school. I figured that since I was back in town, I might as well give back to my community in some way! Within the year of joining, I took my Fire 1 class, enjoyed the hell out of it. Passed, and finally became interior! For those of you that don’t know what that means… until you take Fire 1, you are a “support member” and can only remain outside of a building on calls. I thought this would be a big burden for me since I have exercise induced asthma that I would have a tough time in the burning building or carrying all the heavy equipment. Alas, it wasn’t a problem. I kept responding to the calls… any time of day, or night. Took the top responder spot a few times at the monthly meetings. Eventually took Fire 2 and got certified in Hazmat Awareness and Hazmat Operations. About 5 years in the department I moved to Danbury, where it was extremely tough to respond to calls, because typically by the time that I make it to the station, we get cancelled or all the trucks have left the station. Now that I’m living in Ridgefield again, I am looking forward to making many more calls.

What it was like as a fire fighter during the pandemic:

At our annual Blood borne pathogens training 2020… we were learning about different Blood borne pathogens, the safety that goes into it, etc. when at the end, someone asked about The Corona Virus in China… the instructor said, “oh it’ll never come here!”... “might effect a few thousand”… a month later, the country shut down. This now takes us into the challenges and some observations that I encountered and experienced within the fire department.

Starting on a positive note – With all of us being secluded, that included kids (and adults) not having birthday parties anymore. The department got asked if we can do birthday party ‘drive-bys’ with all of the emergency apparatus and the police, etc. We had a great time doing them and only asked for whatever the family would like to give as payment. I believe we did about 80 drive-bys. We might still do them if anyone is interested! Now on to some of the observations… To be honest, there really weren’t that many VOLUNTEER calls… many medic calls, but the calls that the volunteers respond to, the numbers went down drastically. Not having big events, or parties, or family over, or even businesses being open, it was actually pretty… quiet. As much as I love going on calls, the fact that people didn’t need us, was a plus! With that being said, with the lower number of calls, means that if you typically didn’t respond often (me being in Danbury), then you turned into possibly having no calls at all for months… this turned into a huge challenge because many of the volunteers looked like they were not doing their full part and we actually got threatened that if we were not showing up often that we would have to come in front of the board and reevaluate our role. Please keep in mind that if Covid scared you, you would be able to take a “leave of absence” which I believe only 1 person did. Another challenge was monthly meetings – with not being able to have many people in a closed room like we do at the fire house, we had to have meetings at the Fire barn with the bay door open. That was all well and good until it got to the colder months… Something else that changed was our Truck check/drill schedule. We usually have truck check or drills every Tuesday. With having a limited amount of people allowed in one area, instead of the 25 or so we can have during a drill or truck check, we were limited to only five… so checking our apparatus now took that much longer to check. Also adding wiping down the apparatus and all the tools, was another step that we had to take which took more time to do. A positive of smaller drills was that we got to have a more intimate drill and got more time doing hands on tasks and not having to take turns as much. A big negative though was not getting to see all our brothers and sisters in the department as often as we used to. When we got the opportunity to get the vaccine, we all took it. I believe I got my first one in February of this past year, which felt extremely good and it brought up the spirits for many of us! We were now able to have trucks checks and drills all together again which has been excellent.

When Mike asked me to share an inspirational story with the group, I thought to myself about what story or call I would like to share. There have been many different and interesting calls, but the one the sticks out in my head is the fire that happened in Casagmo (housing development in Ridgefield) about 9 years ago… I was driving to Ridgefield from the YMCA on the way to have dinner with my whole family at my grandmother’s house… in Casagmo. Her address is 6 Cook close. All of a sudden my pager goes off and the call comes in… “Engine 1, Engine 2, Medic 1, Medic 2, Volunteers respond with Engine 3, Rescue 7, Truck 8, Tanker 10 and tanker 12 to a structure fire in Casagmo… 17 Cook Close”…….. NOW my mind is now racing, and so am I…to get to the fire house and to hope that my family is not in danger. I turn my blue emergency lights on in my car, and race to the fire house. Getting to HQ, I was able to hop on the last truck out which was the ladder truck. When we arrive on scene, I saw my whole family outside my grandmothers looking at the burning condo directly across from her condo on the same street. Unfortunately, this was my grandmother’s close friends house. Now, knowing the dangers of what could possibly happen if anyone was inside, I went to my family and told them to get grandma inside…we do not know if anyone was in the house at this time. After assuring they were okay, I raced to go throw the 24 foot ladder on the front of the building with another firefighter so they can vent the roof to hopefully cut off the fire to this one unit and to not have it spread through the walls. Once that was thrown up, I was on manning the entrance of the unit with a hose constantly watering down the threshold so the fire would not crawl to the outside of the unit….. that’s when the moment happened. When I heard them shout for a stretcher. It was the first time that I saw someone carry a burned victim out of a fire. We got her on the stretcher, clothes burned off her body, ash everywhere… and she wasn’t breathing. I immediately grabbed onto the front of the stretcher since we all had to lift and carry it quickly but carefully over the maze of hoses strewn all over the parking lot to get it to the ambulance. I prayed and prayed real hard for that person not to be my grandmother’s friend…. Unfortunately, it was. And unfortunately. She didn’t make it… From then on, I knew that this was a serious job. You never know who will be the victim on these calls…and that is scary as hell. That is where the trust comes in. Trust in my fellow firefighters to do their job, take it seriously and have each-other’s backs.

Many people asked when I moved to Danbury if I was going to join the department up there and I said, no. I enjoy it too much in Ridgefield with the crew we have here. I wouldn’t change it for the world! Thank you all so much for listening to me and I hope I have shown you a little bit about what the fire service is like and what we go though when times are good and when times are bad. Thank you!

-Mike K.