The closest I came to being a Hero....

[catnhatnh]

Was late in 1986 when I was a freshly licenced EMT (Connecticut 86-243)....After just a few shift I signed onto a crew in late November nominally run by a divinity student called "Father Jeff"...who asked me to take the shift as crew chief...When I tried to demure he said he hated paperwork and offered to run the shift, but if I did the paperwork I'd get crew chief hours....So we went to an MVA (motor vehicle accident) with multiples (more than one vehicle or injured persons)...It was three vehicles with 5 injured...as first responder we took the vehicle that was both T-boned by a car coming down an icy hill and then rammed from behind....The victim was a 17 year old girl in about an 1982 Buick....the car was skewed and bent and the windows were mostly blown...So I leaned through the passenger windows and waited with my clipboard to record the accident...then I was grabbed by the ankles and thrown into the back seat...Father Jeff took the clipboard and told me that "crew chief does first assessment....Y'all have to picture sleet and rain and a crumpled hood and the smell of gas and arcing from the battery...The fire department appeared and more ambulances...the victim-Ellen I learned-was bleeding from the head-a lot.....she would scream and shake her head for 1/2 a minute or more and then pass out...The firemen put a blanket over her and I and then cut the roof off...later they cut out the pedal cluster that crushed her ankle...So the evening ended...

So that night I got close....2 days later she was still touch and go and I don't know how she did.I performed well but get this-I did nothing unexpected-it was what I signed on for.I never exceeded expectations of what an EMT should do....I was a good guy that night, but most people have performed well occasionally.A hero is that night squared...

[Vincardog]

1. ASk me about the time I kept St Louis harbor from blowing up.

[catnhatnh]

2. Tell me about it...

I'm betting a ton of people here have behaved well.I'd love to hear what happened-I'm betting you don't claim the hero label...tho you may be

[Vincardog]

4. I was only saving my own ass. Do you like this story?

The sun was warming my back and I lazily rolled over to tan my front. The tropical sand warmed my back and I relaxed content in my warm cocoon blissfully relaxing on the beach. The only thing disturbing the bliss was the ding, ding, ding, of the buoy warning ships to avoid the beach.
The waves were picking up and the bell was ringing more insistently. I turned over and covered my ears with the pillow. I heard the door open, the click of the light switch, and mates voice saying ‘Rise and shine for Valley Line’. The door closed as the mate and that annoying bell moved along to wake the deck hand in the next cabin. I wiped the sleep from my eyes grabbed my kit and headed for the bathroom where I brushed my teeth and got ready to face the next watch. After dressing I made my way to the galley it was 05:30 time for breakfast. I enter the galley saying hello to the second mate and pilot who were already enjoying the traditional riverboat hearty breakfast. ‘Your relief is here’ says the pilot ‘you don’t have to relieve your man. Have a nice trip home’.

I return to my cabin, empty the dresser into my duffel bag then go to the wheel house to get my draw and check when we will be hitting the harbor.
At the top of the stairway to the wheel house I wait as the captain clears the JV Barracks bridge and he has time to relax and gives me permission to enter the bridge. ‘You can catch the first harbor boat’ he says as he hands me my $500 draw of traveling money. ‘Thank you sir’ I say. I then return to my cabin, grab my gear and say goodby to my crew mates. By 06:00 I am standing on the deck, my duffel bag on my shoulder looking for the harbor boat. I see the deck crew stripping the last loaded barge on the port side and make my way towards it across the tow. I carefully avoid the rigging and am mind full of the man hole covers over the wing tanks. I have survived the hazards of this mobile man eating environment for the last month unscathed. I did not see the benefit in letting a misstep now result in a broken bone or having an upturned manhole cover turn this bull into a steer . I waved at my replacement as we passed each other. I walked to and got on the loaded barge just as the crew turned it loose. The river was running swiftly and the little harbor boat belched inky black diesel exhaust from both stacks as it wrestled the barge away from the tow and across the mighty Mississippi river. Shortly we were closing on the fleet at a good rate of speed. I looked at the fleet. It was a few hundred feet upstream from where the gasoline barges were pumped out. I looked at the signs on and around the gas barges ‘NO SMOKING, ‘NO SPARKS ‘ , NO OPEN FLAME WITHIN 500 feet’ and threw my cigarette into the river. I was looking at five barges that had just been emptied. I knew that they were each full of fumes and that I was looking at the explosive power of five A-Bombs.

I jumped unto the fleet just as the harbor boat slammed my taxi barge into it. A moment later and I had to take a few quick steps to avoid the wake it threw as it washed over the heavily loaded barge upon which I was walking. As I stepped off the first fleet barge onto the next closer to shore I noticed the first barge was moving. It was beginning to slide down stream.
The harbor boat in its rush to break up the tow had knocked it loose. I dropped my duffel bag and looked around quickly. I was looking for a loose rope or wire. I saw the gap between the loose barge and the fleet widen and force of the mighty muddy water growing exponentially. I could see the heavy barge with its thousand-ton payload accelerating down stream. In my mind’s eye I imagined the cataclysmic explosive inevitable result of slamming a million pounds of steel and payload into those five atomic gas cans. My heart and my pace quickened. I caught up to and passed the loose barge without seeing any remedy. The barge passed me and I broke into a trot. I was one half the way down the fleet barge and desperately searching for a way to stop the increasingly inevitable incendiary explosion. I broke into a dead run as I saw my potential salvation on the deck. The loose barge was just clearing the fleet as I bent and scooped up a long strap. It was nothing but five foot of 3/4" wire with two big looping eyes but it was the most welcome sight my eyes had ever seen. I dropped the first eye onto a timberhead at a dead run and leaped after the fleeing loose barge. The strap was at its limit as I hooked the free eye over the forward ear of a cavil. My momentum was so great I could not stop until I had jumped upon the barges’ cover and taken two more giant steps. There I turned and watched as the wire stretched and the renegade run away barge slowed. I watched as the momentum transferred itself up the wire into the fleet. The barge came to a grudging stop as the energy wave flowed up the strap and tugged at the fleet. I watched the fleet momentarily yanked into current. When the current shoved the fleet back ashore, the barge I was standing upon was pulled back upstream, and I stepped back onto the fleet.

After I grabbed my gear and climbed up the riverbank I turned and enjoyed the view. I wondered what it would have looked like if the river were a few hundred feet wider at that spot.

[catnhatnh]

6. Do I like it? It stinks of REAL...

Which was my point...you did somethig special to survive....aren't heros different?

[Vincardog]

8. I did what I had to do. Where is the heroism in that?

[sam sarrha]

3. my research took a bad pesticide off the market...

[catnhatnh]

5. Tell us the whole thing....

This started out about being a hero...But I don't claim to be a hero and I guess you don't either...How about this-What good things did you do and what fears did you overcome?:

[sam sarrha]

7. better not.. but,

.

i have pulled a couple of my drunken friends from emenant drowning.. no big deal, just grabed them by the hair, pulled em out.. nothing like the guy who swam thru the ice and saved those people from the plane crash.. that was a hero. or the army officer who refused to order his troops to participate in an illegal war in iraq.

[Sebass1271]

9. I haven't done anythinglike that.. HOW ABOUT THE TRAIN

GUY? the one who threw himself over another guy (who had just fallen off the tracks) to save him from an upcoming train?

man, that was heroism... to its finest...