Sunday evening about supper time a police car went flying past our house in a residential part of Sparta. It has happened before. Then an ambulance and a second police car went flying by. Something bad is happening. Very soon thereafter the Sparta Fire Department’s Chief’s truck went flying by. This caught my attention!

Being curious, I went outside only to see and smell the thick, black smoke rising above a four-plex house a few houses away and the first of at least three fire trucks arriving with their crews of volunteer firemen. These volunteers jumped from their trucks and automatically went to work reminding me of something between a precision drill team and a well-trained football team; each member with an assigned task required for team success! I didn’t make good notes, but there were at least three big fire trucks, a couple of fire department pick-up trucks, two ambulances, and an untold number of Sparta Police and Monroe County Sheriff cars all in response to this emergency. In short time, the fire was out having been basically limited to one apartment.

I visited with the Sparta Fire Chief a few days later just to express my gratitude and found out a couple of more interesting facts. Once they had water on the fire, the fire was virtually out in two minutes. Two minutes is less than a typical advertising interruption on your favorite television show! And, the huge platform fire truck was hooked to a second, nearby hydrant in case additional water was needed which it wasn’t. He also shared that an outside “expert”, either an insurance adjuster or a state fire inspector, was amazed that the rest of the building had been saved (one lower apartment had excessive water damage and the other two had minimum smoke damage).

It is time to get philosophical. How much do we depend on our Fire Departments and how often do we give them a simple “Thanks”? It is also time to reflect a little. While this fire was “close to home” it was not my first “close to home” experience. When I was fourteen, my nearest (a quarter mile) neighbors’ house burned to the ground. When I was seventeen a nearby city lost 28 businesses in 26 buildings in a massive fire and I was close enough to hear the cans of paint in the hardware store exploding.

More recently, we lived in the vicinity of the big Four Corners Forest Fire of about twenty years ago and had to evacuate. As we drove down the coulee, my wife driving the car ahead of me, the night sky was clear but as we crossed the ridge I could hardly see her taillights for the smoke! (Our house and buildings were untouched.) There were a few civic minded Cataract area citizens that organized an appreciation picnic for all the fire fighters and many other first responders – and I remember one old gent lamenting that he had been on the volunteer fire department for a couple of decades and this was the first time anyone had said thanks in such a grand and wonderful manner!

We need to be more appreciative of our firefighters. While city fire departments like La Crosse have paid personnel waiting at the fire stations, rural fire departments like Sparta have to summon the volunteers from wherever they happen to be at the moment. We need to be thankful for the many hours they –full time or volunteer-- spend training, so when a fire happens they can respond like clockwork or a precision drill team. And, we need to thank their families who allow their lives to be disrupted when the firefighter answers the call. We even need to thank the employers who allow the volunteers to respond instantly upon notification. The other first responders such as policeman and ambulance personnel deserve a word of thanks too. Don’t forget the 911 operators as they are usually the critical first step!

Nationally, Fire Prevention Week might be an appropriate time for thanking your local firefighters. Fire Prevention Week this year is October 5th to October 11th and this year’s theme is “Charge into Fire Safety”. The week is historically the second week of October from Sunday to Saturday that includes October 9th. It has been observed since 1922 with the first Presidential Proclamation coming from President Calvin Coolidge in 1925. The significance is the Great Chicago Fire started on October 8th, 1871.

This was the same day that Wisconsin’s Peshtigo Forest Fire started which burned 1.2 million acres (1,875 square miles) in northeastern Wisconsin that included much of the southern half of Door County and parts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. There were five times as many people killed in the Peshtigo fire than in Chicago’s fire. The Peshtigo fire has been called “the deadliest wildfire in United States history.”

This week find a way to thank your Fire Department personnel. I just did.