We owe a huge debt to firefighters who risk their own lives daily – all to keep the rest of us safe

HIS name is Manos Tsaloagos and he is the fireman who, with two of his colleagues, rescued Zoe Holohan from the boot of a burning car as she and her husband of just a few days tried to escape the flames that were consuming the Greek holiday resort of Mati, near Athens. In an unspeakable tragedy, the groom, Brian O’Callaghan-Westropp, did not survive the wildfire.

Zoe works for Independent News and Media and, given the relatively small newspaper community in Dublin, we have many mutual friends. I personally did not know her but, just last week on Facebook, I glanced at the happy, loving photos that pals were posting from the wedding.

Even to a casual observer, it looked like an occasion of pure joy, but one that sadly turned to horror on what should have been the most enjoyable time of the newlyweds’ lives: their honeymoon.

Zoe has suffered serious injuries but, without Manos and his fellow firefighters, this could have been a double tragedy. In the pit of grief, that may not seem to offer much in the way of consolation right now, but in time, hopefully, it will.

By now, you’ve probably also seen a very short video clip taken from the front window of a car speeding along the motorway to Athens. On the left side of the road, flames are consuming a hillside forest, and shooting dozens of metres in the air. On the right, more flames are visible, flicking out over the Tarmac.

You are so focused on what’s ahead, you might have missed something.

Hell

Standing on the concrete barrier in the central reservation, there is another firefighter – whether man or woman, the clip is too fleeting to tell – and he or she is going nowhere. He or she is there to fight the conflagration, rooted to the spot in an earthly Hell, there to make sure that others are safe.

It is a fairly safe bet, I think, that all of us are terrified of fire, probably above almost any other threat to our lives.

At night, we damp down embers in the grate and make sure the fireguard is in place to stop a rogue spark hitting the carpet. We make sure candles are snuffed out.

If there are smokers in the house, we double-check to ensure the butts are extinguished, and weekly we check that the smoke alarms have working batteries. We have laws so that clothing, and the fabric on our furniture, are flame-retardant.

Public spaces have limits on capacity, and a minimum number of fire escapes is compulsory; those of us of an age will never forget the wanton negligence that led to the Stardust tragedy.

Because fascinating as fire is, a primal source not just of heat but light too, we also know it is deadly.

There can scarcely be a child alive who did not put a finger over a candle to see how it felt, and equally there can be few who ever tried it a second time.

Our instinct is to recoil from it and, if faced with a big fire, to risk any other injury – cuts from jumping through a shattered window, broken bones from leaping from an upper storey – just to escape it.

For Manos and his colleagues, and for the wider fraternity of firefighters across the world, the first thing they must do is fight the natural instinct to flee.

For them, a different instinct kicks in – they run towards fire in the hope that lives can be saved.

This never was truer than on September 11, 2001, when thousands of first responders, most of them firefighters, sped to the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center after both had been hit by planes and exploded into fireballs.

I’ve seen many of the programmes made about that disaster, and as you watch the fire crews from all over the five boroughs of New York converge on the towers, all you see is grim determination as they enter the lobby and start the long climb up the stairs to start the evacuation.

You could look at that footage for the rest of your life and the one thing you never will see is this: you never will see a single man or woman of the New York City Fire Department turn and walk in the opposite direction. This was the job they were trained to do. This was the people they are and were.

In Manhattan on the day that changed our world forever, a total of 343 firefighters – a huge number with Irish names – died just doing their jobs, and there are others who are still paying the price.

Last year, Brian J Masterson, originally from Lissavaddy, Co. Longford, died of oesophageal cancer he contracted from ingesting the pulverised concrete and asbestos dust that filled the air when the towers collapsed. He was the 124th firefighter to die of illness contracted as a direct result of 9/11, and more have passed away since.

These risks to firemen and women are just the physical ones. Many others have suffered emotional ill health after witnessing tragedies the rest of us thankfully will never have to contemplate. For their families, there is another worry: that today is the day they won’t come home.

Policing in Ireland is relatively, though obviously not entirely, safe, and death in service is not something a wife, husband or child has to worry about every day. Fire is different though. Every time a member of a firefighter’s family hears a siren, or a news bulletin, there must come that sickening dread that lasts all the way up to the phone call to say the emergency is over and a loved one is safe.

Vocation

Sometimes, it does not end so well. Most of us remember Mark O’Shaughnessy and Brian Murray, firemen who were killed while fighting a blaze in Bray in 2007. Their heroism was remembered more appropriately by a grateful public than it seemed to be by officialdom.

Once, I needed the services of the fire brigade myself. The tall row of dense hedges beside my house went up in smoke, and flames were licking the gable wall, which ultimately suffered no damage beyond blistered paintwork. The fire brigade arrived within minutes and danger was averted, and I’ve never been so grateful in my life.

They chastised me, and rightly so, because it was started by hot ashes that set fire to the bin, and my carelessness could easily have put their lives, as well as my own, in jeopardy. But what I remember most was their calm professionalism and muted heroism. Attempts to thank them profusely were met with a simple assertion: that’s our job.

Well, it’s not a job to the rest of us, but a very specific vocation. This week, the epitome of that quiet bravery was a man in Greece who saved Zoe Holohan’s life.

We give thanks for Manos Tsaloagos and for the hundreds of thousands around the world just like him.

We owe a huge debt to the men and women who walk towards the fire instead of running away.