As an Aussie neighbour who has benefitted from your excellent attention whenever we had a bushfire, I am very grateful, Mike, and consider you a Hero.

But even Heros should know when to hang up their boots.

You have earned your place in the world and in many, many people's affection.

Have a cigar, Sir.

Congratulations on doing a job which 99% of people couldn't. A job that proves men to be anything but useless.

I salute you, Sir.

Mike, you deserve several pats on the back and thanks from all the people you have helped over the last 24 years.

Would it be impolite to ask what you plan to do now? A man needs a project.

I am rather humbled by the replies here.
See what I was originally trying to do was write this down, so that I could see it and get it into my head that this was coming to an end.
More or less so that I might not shed any tears on the night I formally de-camp.

When I first started in 1987, the bulk of a fire-man's work was putting out building fires and the odd car accident.
Now in more modern times, we are expected to be the be-all and end all of fire and rescue services, even in so much that we are more and more being asked to provide medical services when an Ambulance can't get to an incident.
Could be a child choking on some food, it could be a guy having a coronary, this is over and above what we do as Fire-men.
I don't personally agree with this, while I don't mind assisting the Ambulance service, it is not our job description to be a first response medical service.

Folks,
I have been to a LOT of shocking incidents in my time, in so much so that the Police require white screens around a whole road or a building to shield the public from them.
I have vomited at at least 12 incidents that I can remember in the last few years, due to their nastiness.

But that is life I suppose,
I'm looking forward to getting back to a semi-normal life, however I won't be leaving the Fire Station behind, in total.
I've been asked to take over from our current "Station-Keeper" who is 89 and this will mean I'll be fixing stuff around the station most weekends.

What I intend to do though, is take Stace away on a holiday this summer, to Rarotonga, this is where we had our honey-moon and she said she wanted to go back there, if even just for a week of peace and quiet.
She hasn't had a holiday of any sort in about 3 years (for those of you that don't already know, she is a Senior Paramedic in Christchurch, the quakes there have frayed EVERYONES tempers and usually it's people like Ambulance staff are the first to wear it).
She doesn't know she is going there yet, but I have booked the tickets for us, we leave the day after Boxing Day.

Yan Yan,
I like to keep busy mate,
I have a list of little projects in mind here, the biggest of which would be finally getting my workshop up and running as it should be.
It needs to be sealed and painted and I need to install extra 3-phase outlets for the two welders I've bought over the last year or so, but have had them sitting in the middle of the floor here.
The paint job is going to be the biggest change, I'm sick of looking at block walls that are decorated with the worst of 1960's colours.

Oh gosh. I wish even firemen didn't see the things they do. I was on a scene once where helicopter flyers (is that what you call them) risked their lives to land so they could picked up children in an accident and take them to hospital where they died anyways.

4 year old girl lay on the ground and firemen picked her up only to have her brains fall out and they had to cut cars for dead bodies to be released.

A nice fireman tried to protect me from seeing it all saying "You don't want to see this" but he had to all the time. I didn't sleep well for 2 weeks cause I wanted to see and did.

I too want to give you respect and regards for all you have done. I feel all I can give is my love and appreciation.

You're one of the finest men alive MikeT and I think real well of you.

Quote from julie

Oh gosh. I wish even firemen didn't see the things they do. I was on a scene once where helicopter flyers (is that what you call them) risked their lives to land so they could picked up children in an accident and take them to hospital where they died anyways.

4 year old girl lay on the ground and firemen picked her up only to have her brains fall out and they had to cut cars for dead bodies to be released.

A nice fireman tried to protect me from seeing it all saying "You don't want to see this" but he had to all the time. I didn't sleep well for 2 weeks cause I wanted to see and did.

I too want to give you respect and regards for all you have done. I feel all I can give is my love and appreciation.

You're one of the finest men alive MikeT and I think real well of you.

Julie,
I am probably not one of the finest men around, I have my own issues to work through, like we all do.
But at the end of the day, I've tried to do my best.
The sad but real fact about doing things like fire-fighting is, you are going to have a certain "downfall factor" sooner or later in your career.

One of the worst house fires I've ever attended (when I was still a career SFF), was when we turned out to a house fire in Timaru, in a street that they used to call "Nappy Valley", owing to the large number of solo mothers in that street.
We turned up with the house quite well involved, women had come from all of the adjacent houses and were screaming blue murder as to why we never got there quick enough, as there were 2 children still in the house.

We set up pretty quick and myself and a fellow Senior FF got into breathing apparatus and took a hose reel into the house, trying to find these kids.
Get into the house and the stairs had all burned out, so Mark, went and got a ladder, while I waited.
Go upstairs and start searching out 4 bedrooms (you have to do this quickly, because you only have a certain "window", before your BA set starts to run out of air), as well as dragging a hose.
I can hear a girl screaming from one of the bedrooms and then silence.

Upon searching the third bedroom, we find her and her brother in the wardrobe, comatose.
I made a HUGE call that morning, take my helmet and BA mask off and put the mask on her, left Mark behind and crawled all the way back out to the front lawn.
By then white sheets had been put up, to keep prying eyes out.
Mark followed me out with the brother, who had no pulse, no vital signs at all.
So, here is Mark and myself, no Ambulance there yet and trying to revive these kids.
The District Commander turns up and only after 45 minutes of CPR/Rescue breathing do we give up.
I lay down on the lawn and balled my eyes out, took my BA set off and cried some more.
Put the white sheet over the top of them and call the coroner.

About half an hour later, a woman turns up, she is rat-arsedly drunk (at 7am), this is the parent of these kids.
The house is burned near to the ground and her kids are dead.
All she has to offer, is the lame statement of "I hope you got my kids out OK, I've had a night out with the girls, I don't care about the house, I'm only renting it"

During the time we were "making up" our appliances, we had to listen to things (from mums from over the road and down the street), to the effect of:

• "If there was a woman running the show at your Fire Station, you wouldn't be watching porn all night and you could have saved these kids lives".
• "Men are f**king useless, even if you pay them".
• "It is about time we had more women in the Fire brigades, they care more than men, men couldn't give a shit.

See this is the feminist indoctrination that being on a Domestic Purposes Benefit gives women, you have to subscribe to that bollocks and they do.
Have 5-7 kids to different fathers and you're set for life.

The Good that Men do, seldom does them any good.

No Good deed goes unpunished.

That's so awful, Mike, on so many levels. My heart goes out to you, and to anyone who might actually care about those kids.

Quote from KellyMac

That's so awful, Mike, on so many levels. My heart goes out to you, and to anyone who might actually care about those kids.

And when the fireman cares more for the kids than their own mother..?

During the time we were "making up" our appliances, we had to listen to things (from mums from over the road and down the street), to the effect of:

• "If there was a woman running the show at your Fire Station, you wouldn't be watching porn all night and you could have saved these kids lives".
• "Men are f**king useless, even if you pay them".
• "It is about time we had more women in the Fire brigades, they care more than men, men couldn't give a shit.

No comment KM? These are your sisters talking.
Mike did the best he could. The pathetic "mothers" merely complained about the inadequacy of men. It happens everywhere and every day.

You choose to praise Mike and that's good, since he's most surely a hero.
However, you carefully ignore his comments about irresponsible man-hating mothers.
Afraid of being labelled as a traitor?

Quote from Yan Yan

And when the fireman cares more for the kids than their own mother..?
[/LIST]No comment KM? These are your sisters talking.
Mike did the best he could. The pathetic "mothers" merely complained about the inadequacy of men. It happens everywhere and every day.

You choose to praise Mike and that's good, since he's most surely a hero.
However, you carefully ignore his comments about irresponsible man-hating mothers.
Afraid of being labelled as a traitor?

"When the fireman cares more for the kids than their own mother", was kind of my point.

I didn't ignore anything. I took it as a given that the neighbors complaining about the inadequacy of men in the face of dead children, meant that they didn't care about the kids either. Did I really need to spell that out?

Do not presume to tell me who my sisters are. Just because I don't go along with everything that's written on this site verbatim doesn't make me a feminist. And just because I'm plumbed the same way as those worthless excuses for human beings doesn't make them my sisters.

It happens everywhere and every day.

No, it doesn't. It happens a lot. Even one time is too much. But it doesn't happen everywhere and every day. If it did, how would women have the time to get anything done at all, what with criticizing and condemning men 24/7?

Kind of like, how do men get anything done at all, what with obsessing about sex every 6 seconds?

How can it be ok to generalize about one sex, when it's not ok to generalize about the other?

You are getting a tad terse these days Yan, holding even Good people as complicit.

Despite all of her recent troubles, Kelly remains firmly onside with men's issues and earns my respect for it.

You've always come across as a fine and upstanding fellow Mike, and I wish you all the best in your well-deserved retirement.

Quote from KellyMac

"When the fireman cares more for the kids than their own mother", was kind of my point.

I didn't ignore anything. I took it as a given that the neighbors complaining about the inadequacy of men in the face of dead children, meant that they didn't care about the kids either. Did I really need to spell that out?

Do not presume to tell me who my sisters are. Just because I don't go along with everything that's written on this site verbatim doesn't make me a feminist. And just because I'm plumbed the same way as those worthless excuses for human beings doesn't make them my sisters.



No, it doesn't. It happens a lot. Even one time is too much. But it doesn't happen everywhere and every day. If it did, how would women have the time to get anything done at all, what with criticizing and condemning men 24/7?

Kind of like, how do men get anything done at all, what with obsessing about sex every 6 seconds?

How can it be ok to generalize about one sex, when it's not ok to generalize about the other?

KellyMac and Yan Yan,
Please, all I was doing was illustrating to you folks what an operational FF goes through,
I'd hate there to be a falling out here, over something like this.
One thing needs to be said, fire-fighting has taught me one thing (if nothing else).
You see folks in their worst states, after a house fire at 2am, could be a car crash at 9pm.
You always speak to them on the same level as yourself and speak tactfully.
Comforting people after a shock is what we do as our trade, it is about looking out for your fellow man (regardless of gender).