THE OBSERVATION BOOTH
OP-ED & PHOTOS BY ANDREA DIALECT
FIRE EXTINGUISHER
My biggest adjustment when becoming a firefighter was adjusting to being at the firehouse overnights and not being with my babies. – Crissy Nicholas
Say it ain’t so… The cat is finally out of the bag! Just to think that for all these years during those late nights when those lights were out in the front of the house in passing or by happenchance on one of those super early morns as whizzing by.
I thought that work gear had been prepped just before the counting of those sheep and you fighters of the house were likely in a full snore with gear next to beds to avoid the scramble during the sounding of those alarms when making that run for that pole. Ironically being a person who has oftentimes worked those overnight shifts.
For some reason and I don’t know why I thought that a good light sleep had been a part of that in-depth training in-which was part of the protocol. But, I’ve been told that it’s 24 hours on and 24 hours off. Meaning you guys are all wide-eyed and bushy-tailed and on the lookout for them alarms, bells, whistles, or whatever choose to come?
It has to have been television now that I think about it. But seemingly no matter what state or city I’d been when spotting houses that house those community servants that extinguish fires. Its appearance is as quiet as it is kept during those late nights.
Forgive me for I have sinned and even more so just knowing that you guys are on standby 24/7 for us makes all the difference. Thank you for your contribution to our world. (As I bow) But just pull the lights up around the place why don’t ya, IJS lol!
BOOTS, LADDERS & RIGS
Firefighter Crissy Nicholas
“Life has a way of making those tables turn and as so things changed suddenly for me when getting hit by that car. It was a rainy night and I was crossing the street. I saw the gentlemen at the corner at the red light and my intuition told me to walk in the crosswalk. I noticed that he was on his cell phone and I was almost there at the end of that crosswalk but he was too close and he hit me.
“I fell onto my left hip and that was that. I remember just lying there and at the time I can remember this lady being very adamant about me giving her my purse. She kept asking for it and I told her “No, I don’t know you!” The cop that was there was looking at me like “Don’t give that woman your purse!” Let’s just say that I was alert enough to know not to do that lol.
“The ambulance showed up and they put the neck brace on me and put me on a backboard because its procedure. When I got to the hospital they told me that I didn’t have anything broken but I knew that I was feeling pain so I went to a chiropractor and I started physical therapy right away. But I was told by someone that you shouldn’t do physical therapy not knowing what was wrong so I had an MRI and they found out that I had three slipped discs in my neck and two in my lower back. I remember one day coming home from PT calling out to God and asking him, “What am I going to do to take care of my family?”
“In the medical field, I’d always tell the nurses that, “you got to take care of yourself first before you can take care of anybody else.” In reality that’s a life lesson and a rule for everybody. One day one of the nurses called me to remind me of that, ‘You always preach to all of us about self-care she said. Are you taking care of yourself right now? I said no because I have to take care of my family.’
“She gave me my own advice ‘You’re not going to be able to be there for your family if you don’t let your body heal.’ After work that day when I got home, I pondered my next move.
SCALING HEIGHTS
At the time I had been working at Clara Maass Hospital for six years as a medical tech. I was always dabbling in the medical field somehow or in some way since my sophomore year in high school. I have been a firefighter for five years so far. But when I was growing up as a little girl, I wanted to be a pediatrician.
One day my mom was asleep, she had just gotten home from work. We were running around the house playing and we broke one of my mom’s vases. We cleaned up first, but we left the vase sitting in the hallway and my twin cut her leg on it.
“At the time I hadn’t ever seen any medical shows that taught this but I just knew. When the first thing I used didn’t work I got a tee shirt and tied it on her leg and continued to press on it and it stopped bleeding. It was God; I knew it wasn’t me because I never saw that before and also, I always admired my pediatrician Dr. Reginald Coleman.
“At that moment I knew that I wanted to be a pediatrician. After high school I went to Georgian Court College. Then I got pregnant with my son. I didn’t finish but I did go back to school. I went to Lincoln Tech and Essex County College. Using both of my certifications I became a med tech at the hospital.
“After the accident they had me sifting through one on ones, so I wasn’t doing too much work at the time. But in the same token, I knew that I had to leave. I cried out to God once again and I was looking through Facebook that night and the civil service test for the police had come out; a few days later the civil service test for fighter fighters also had come out and I signed up for both.
“I was a provisional police officer at first but it didn’t work out. About a year later I got a letter from the city asking if I still wanted to be a firefighter but I didn’t get it in time. I received my letter 2 weeks later than I should have and it was too late.
“I cried and I cried and then I just stopped crying. I cried because I was going through a rough patch at the time and I knew that the job would help my family. But I trusted God; it doesn’t matter what you go through in life you have to have that faith of a mustard seed. I knew that if it was meant for me to be a firefighter, I was going to be a firefighter.
“This next morning, I went to city hall and I explained my situation, I was told to write a letter of deferment, and that following year I got called again. At the time I was working for East Orange Recreation. When I got my letter from the fire department I was jumping up and down, I was so happy.
“I showed it to my husband at the time and he said that he was so proud of me. I wrote the letter of interest and I brought it to city hall to make sure that they got my letter. I walked it in, they made a copy and stamped it, and told me, ‘This is your receipt.’ I was on cloud nine when I walked out of there!
MASK UP
“Orientation basically let me know what to expect going into fire service and we met the command staff. They made copies of all that personal stuff they needed. I filled out a 30-page application which had a two-day deadline. That was the first part of the selection process.
“The second part of the selection process was your fingerprints and then there was the interviewing process. I interviewed in front of three people the chief of the department at the time, the manager of human resources, and the second commander of chief which was a captain at the time. I was so freakin’ nervous.
“Captain Crosby – now Chief Crosby – looked at me and said, ‘just be yourself!’ Ms. Monica Reed looked at me and said, ‘how are you with your girlfriends? Be that way with us.’
“So I kinda relaxed my shoulders and sat back and relaxed and just talked and I passed the interview process. The next step was the physical which included a drug test, height, weight, hearing, and etc. Then there was the stress test. The stress test is basically running on a treadmill for a certain amount of time putting stress on your heart because a lot of firefighters die from heart attacks. So they wanted to make sure that your heart is healthy enough for you to be considered. I passed the physical; I passed the stress test and then the academy. The rest is history.
“I love community service. Everything that I have done before becoming a firefighter, working in the medical field, my love for children, and working with children. I love to work with our seniors and the women’s ministry, and I love my natural love for caring for others; being a firefighter allows me that. It allows me to be myself. I love networking with others and being of service and I can do all of that in fire service. I never became that pediatrician that I thought I thought that I wanted to be. A firefighter is what I want to be!”
DID YA KNOW THAT…
Firefighter – a person whose job is to extinguish fires.
Fire Extinguisher – A portable device that discharges a jet of water, foam, gas, or other material to extinguish a fire.
Male firefighters are sometimes referred to as firemen (and, less commonly, female firefighters as firewomen), The fire service, also known in some countries as the fire brigade or fire department, is one of the three main emergency services.
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