Release Date:- 2014-10-30
Availability:- In Stock
Kind:- ebook
Some people run into danger while most people flee. What’s it like to be startled from a deep sleep by a clanging bell, to leap into life-protecting gear, to slide down a pole and mount an engine that in minutes will possibly deliver you to a high-rise office building on fire, or to an accident scene where victims are facing death, or to a brushfire so dense that sunrise will be concealed by toxic smoke? What does it feel like to do everything you can only to find that the 14-year-old girl cannot be saved, that the Auschwitz survivor in your hands has just kissed his wife possibly for the last time? What is it like to wear a bullet-proof vest for protection from shooters while fighting a fire? What does it mean when you feel an urgent compulsion to leave the comfort of your home to rush to a flash flood? This collection of emergency experiences provides a first-hand look at what it means to daily face life-threatening situations. From 1964 to 1994 Lyle Slater served with the Beverly Hills Fire Department, responding to a unique urban mix of celebrity homes and high-rise structures in a setting where climate conditions quickly produce brushfires and flash flooding. You will experience calls to gasoline spills, flash floods, downed electrical lines, auto accidents, and to cardiac arrests. As a member of a CPR team, Lyle helped save 15 people during his 30-year career, many of those situations included in this book. Written during sessions of chemotherapy to treat Myelodesplastic Syndromes caused by years of toxic smoke inhalation, this work exists not to celebrate Lyle Slater but to convey his love of firefighting, to honor those who serve, and to share his feeling that we are not alone when confronting danger. We witness a firefighter’s experiences protecting President Ronald Reagan, fighting fire created by rioters at a mansion sheltering the Shah of Iran, wearing a bullet-proof vest for protection from shooters while fighting fires during the Watts and Rodney King riots, encountering exploding electrical transformers, gas explosions, nearly blindly crawling out of ten-story-high shattered windows, extinguishing a house fire that could have destroyed an entire city block in a cocaine lab chemical explosion, and narrowly escaping a collapsing roof. We also see the less dramatic side to a firefighter’s life, the pranks, the collegial humor that reduces tensions and further bonds relationships that play a part in a profession that requires one to leave the dinner table to respond to life-threatening situations. These experiences, along with Lyle’s personal reflections regarding celebrities involved in emergency calls, everyday people facing death, and his feeling that angels oversaw a life he loved every day, provide first-hand clarity regarding the profession of firefighting and our place in a dangerous world where we are not alone.
