Learning how to Work Together in a Country Torn Apart

Liberals, conservatives, NRA members, anarchists, socialists, lawyers, Christians and Atheists: Together.

I wrote this in 2017, and we need it now more than ever.

Our ambulance bounced up the shoulder of the interstate. The freeway was a parking lot, backed up for miles. Greg and I jumped out when our truck slowed near the scene; we jogged the last few yards. Our rescue truck, driven by Dan, pulled up right behind us. Dan got out, and elevated the big light tower. He turned the lights on and night turned into a black and white movie.

What we saw was horrible. There was a destroyed motorcycle and body parts.

Greg and I stood next to each other.

“Fuck,” I said.

I looked at Greg, “You take patient care? I’ll take triage?”

He nodded, “Got it.” He walked over to the first patient, a guy laying on the road, missing a leg. Greg yelled to Dan, “Dan, see if you can find this guy’s leg! I think I saw it by the white pickup they hit.”

We were at a house fire. This time I had command. One room of the home was fully involved. We’d transported one patient with full-thickness burns who would later die. We were short of firefighters. I got on the radio and told the interior attack crew to come out; they’d been in too long. The last one out was Paul. He took off his SCBA mask and I noticed that his face was grey. He staggered. My heart went to my throat. I jumped out of the truck and jogged over to him. He waved me away, saying he was fine, but I walked him over to the rehab station and asked the medic to check him out.

I was kneeling on the highway. We’d just extricated the only survivor of a family of five from a head-on crash. Bruce, our captain that night, put his hand on my shoulder. “This sucks man. Why don’t you go home? We’ll call Laurie and tell her to take care of you.”

I tell these stories, stories that any firefighter will recognize, when people ask me to describe my volunteer fire department.

My fellow volunteers are people whom I care deeply about. But I would never known them were it not for the department.

We’ve had born-again Christians, a couple of ministers, ex-military, gun-toting NRA guys, lawyers, artists, contractors, Republicans, Independents, Democrats, the uber-liberal, radical feminists, and what I am sure was the only anarchist-socialist-atheist firefighter in the state.

Yet for decades, we’ve been close as a department. Even in the last few years, when the country seems to be tearing apart, we take care of each other. We enjoy being together and know we are serving — together — an important purpose.

It is the work that bonds us.

Standing there in the middle of that chaos of the motorcycle-truck collision, with people yelling and body parts strewn across the highway, Greg and I knew we had to solve this together, we had to go through this and come out the other side with each other. These are among the most honest and ruthless moments humans can share.

They are honest because in those times we are vulnerable and scared. They are ruthless because the decisions we make in those moments are life or death — save someone or watch them die.

Firefighting Transcends Politics

Our work — a privilege — transcends politics. Fires are apolitical. Our work transcends whatever faith you put your faith in. We are in the vocation of life and often death. On the fire ground, the crazy conservative has my back and I — an insane liberal — will do all I can to save his.

It is not simply a catch phrase that firefighters think of the vocation as a Brother and Sisterhood.

A Call to a Nation Divided: Unite Like Firefighters

How does this inform us as a nation divided? I celebrate human differences. But we can and must come together when we need one another: when the barn needs to be built, the car rescued from the flood, the child caught jumping from the burning building.

Most of us, even in our fragmented world, yearn for the kind of connectedness and love that exists when people come together to do vital work. We are here, after all, to do important and meaningful things. We are at our best when we do it together. Fire Departments prove that every day.

Hersch is the author of “Firefighter Zen: A Handbook for Thriving in Tough Times.”