Worcester Six Rightly Remembered as Heroes

To the editors:

I would like to thank Marc J. Ambinder for his article in The Crimson (Opinion, Dec. 6) about the fallen firefighters in Worcester. As a firefighter myself, it is very hard to witness such a tragedy unfold as we did last Friday night. It is an unspeakable tragedy to lose one firefighter, let alone six as we did Friday, or 14 as we did five years ago on Storm King Mountain in Colorado.

These men are shining examples of service-minded individuals who are willing to risk their lives not only for their fire-fighting brethren, but also for complete unknowns who merely may have been in the building. Although their heroism resulted in the loss of their own lives, they should be exalted and remembered for their sense of duty and commitment to their jobs of protection and preservation of life.

We know that each fire we roll to has the potential of being the last, and we take care not to treat any as "normal." Firefighters are not action movie heroes, throwing ourselves indiscriminately into walls of advancing flame. We respect each fire, know its force and know when it is time to retreat. Occasionally we miscalculate, a flaw of our human nature, and that sometimes means fire will claim a victim. When we lose brothers to fire, we all realize that any one of us could have fallen just as easily, and then we renew our vows to fight fire as safely as we can.

These men decided that the lives they could save were worth risking their own lives for, and regrettably, fire claimed all of them. These men are heroes in the true sense of the word, and will be remembered by all of us. Again, thank you for highlighting these men and calling to attention their bravery, it is too bad it has taken a tragedy for many others to realize it.

Adam P. Bailey '01

Dec. 7, 1999