Always ready, never knowing
Chris Goodsell has seen a lot in 15 years, some of it he’d like to forget.
Goodsell is the Fire Chief for the Stanstead Fire Department.
In the past 15 years, he estimates having gone on around 1,000 calls.
“The thing is you just never know what you’re going into,” Goodsell said, “And you don’t know how long you will be gone.”
There are times when the pager goes off and within 15 minutes, everyone rushes to the station to learn the call has been cancelled.
Other times, it could be 17 hours, Goodsell said.
While the inclination is to thank firefighters for their service, Goodsell pointed out that employers deserve credit as well. It takes an understanding boss to accept that when there is a firefighter on staff, there are times they won’t make it to work because of a call.
Of all the calls Goodsell has gone on while with the department, there is one that stood out more than the others.
He was relatively new on the job, about two or three years, he said.
It was a Sunday evening. The fire department and ambulance services had received a call from a granite shop in Ogden.
“A forklift operator was moving a large piece of granite,” Goodsell explained.
“It tipped forward. There was a young guy in front of it. He went to move, but he tripped on a piece of wood and fell,” he recalled.
The piece of granite fell across the legs of the young man.
“I remember when I got there, I saw other guys running between the building and the truck grabbing cribbing, airbags and tools. Looking at some of those guys, looking at their faces, I could tell this was a very serious call,” Goodsell said.
“The young guy was pinned but still conscious and screaming; he was in a lot of pain.”
“The first thing I did was look to the older guys for guidance,” Goodsell said.
“No training can prepare you for every call. Each one is different, unique. Even the repetitive ones,” he said.
“I was the first one to say I don’t know what to do. The officer in charge gave me a task, and I went and did it,” Goodsell said, essentially on auto pilot as the firefighters and emergency personnel with more experience took the lead.
“To watch those guys work under those circumstances was incredible,” Goodsell said.
“After that call we had to have a debriefing. We had to get together and go through what we had seen and how we were feeling about it,” he said.
“It was a nice summer evening,” Goodsell remarked. “You have to deal with it. You have to go home with all that on your mind.”
Goodsell said that during the call, no one could predict what was going to happen.
“That day there were a lot of critical decisions made in a very short time. They were tough decisions to make,” Goodsell said, sparing the graphic details.
“That call stuck with me for many years.”
The young man involved in the accident survived, but lost both of his legs. According to Goodsell, he has become a source of inspiration in the community for maintaining a positive attitude, having overcome such a challenging obstacle.
“You never know what you’re going to and for how long,” Goodsell reiterated.
“You are going to what the pager says. It could say downed power line and then oops, you arrive and it’s on a vehicle and there is someone still in it,” he said.
By the same token, there have been calls of a house on fire, to arrive and realize it was just someone burning brush behind a house and a passerby saw smoke and thought the worst.
It’s not uncommon for the fire department to be criticized for overkill, Goodsell said. Speeding down Main Street at 100 km for a bonfire could seem unnecessary and dangerous, but Goodsell explained, “That’s not what we were given for information.”
In 2017, the Stanstead Fire Department responded to 109 calls.
The busiest year Goodsell could remember was 120 calls in one year. The slowest was around 65, he said.
“You can never predict it,” Goodsell said, explaining that storms can play a big role, resulting in accidents on the road and power outages.
The Ice Storm of 2014 was a particularly challenging one, Goodsell said.
“It was during the Christmas holidays. In the span of four days, we got 30 calls,” he said. “It was cold, nasty and blowing, and we all just wanted to be home.”
There were people in the area that had been out of power for over a week, Goodsell said. Some began using alternate heat sources in their homes, which caused fire hazards and issues with carbon monoxide.
“It was very tough. During that period, all you hoped for was that the pager wouldn’t go off.”
That year Goodsell was hosting a family brunch at his home. He was expecting around 25 friends and family members.
“I got up at 5 a.m. to prep everything,” he said. “I had just finished the last piece of bacon when the pager went off.”
It was a jaws-of-life call on Autoroute 55.
He was gone for about an hour-and-ahalf. “I knew it was coming,” he said.
While Goodsell has seen a lot in his 15 years as a firefighter, he called it a drop in the bucket compared to some of his colleagues.
“There are guys in the department who have been there for more than 30 years,” he said, adding they would have answered upwards of 3,000 calls during their careers.
“Those guys are the real troopers. They’ve been there since I was a kid,” commented Goodsell.
“They are irreplaceable. You will never find people as dedicated as some of those guys. Nothing against new guys, but these days, everyone has some place else to be,” Goodsell said.
“Thirty years ago, you didn’t leave home as much,” he said, adding that these days people are more on the move on weekends, wanting to spend time with family. “It’s tough to find guys willing to take calls. And they need down time too,” he added.
“For most of them, this isn’t a hobby. They take it seriously,” Goodsell said.
“Coming to the station, you’re part of the team. It’s a place to be where you are part of something good, and it makes you feel good,” he said.