Firefighters don’t have snow days Chief: ‘We’re here 365’
Firefighters don’t get snow days. Heck, on a snow day they do twice the amount of work, racing from one call to the next, tires spinning and sliding, ice and snow caked to their hats and jackets.
When the alarm rings, they hustle back into their frozen boots and do it all over again.
“There are no days off for the fire department. We’re here 365, Thanksgiving, Christmas,” New Bedford fire Chief Michael Gomes told me.
So I spent the nor’easter embedded with New Bedford firefighters who answered every call without complaint: downed trees, power lines on fire, flooded homes and a plow truck stuck in the street.
Across 10 trucks, firefighters responded to more than 80 emergencies from midnight to just 2:30 p.m. A firefighter’s shift is 24 hours.
Kevin Sweet, who was working overtime yesterday, said he was reminded of the dreadful winter of 2015. During that deluge of storms he worked 56 hours straight, towing ambulances and plows out of the snow.
“I pulled out, probably, 100 trucks.
We were just going all day,” said Sweet,
50, who also told me he wholeheartedly believes he “could shut down Steph Curry” in hoops.
Between calls, the firefighters jumped out of the truck to push cars out of the snow — Camrys and Civics that had no business being on the roads. They didn’t scold the drivers. They didn’t snicker. They just helped.
When they finally got a breath after nine calls, the crew headed to Cumberland Farms, and 40-year-old firefighter Matt Arguin got an iced coffee. It was 2 p.m. and there was a lot of storm left. But they needed to stay sharp.