It was a quiet day in Pittsburgh Fire Station 9.  The morning shift was swapping out with the afternoon shift.

“It’s a quiet day today, Chief,”  Chad said with a questioning tone.

“Strangely…”  Chief Jackson said in a questioning tone.  “What do you want for lunch guys?” the Chief asked the station.

BEEP, BEEP, BEEEP!!! “Working Commercial Structure Fire at 19:30,”  dispatch said.

“Let’s go guys,” the Chief said.

As they left the station, a big cloud of smoke was in the sky!  “Oh boy, that’s a big one,”  the engineer said.

“Yeah man, now that’s a fire!” Chad said with excitement.

When they arrived on scene,  they were crowded with camera crews and news people, people who got out of their cars to just watch. Police cars and fire trucks were all over the place.

“Let’s get lines to this fire, now!”  The Chief-of-Command said to all the firefighters.

After two hours of fight, a small, ear-piercing sound rang out over the fire grounds.  “Firefighter down, Firefighter down!!” a firefighter said in panic.

“RIT team, go in and find that fallen firefighter!”  the Chief said in a commanding tone.

The RIT team went in and in about 15 minutes, they brought out a burnt up firefighter.  He was covered in dust and ash as they brought him over to the medic…

“He’s going to live,” the medic said. “but its going to be close!”

“Lets get him to the hospital, shall we?” the other medic said.

The man was transported and the firefighters mourned about the incident.  As the fire was coming to an end, the name of the fallen firefighter was never mentioned and that left a lot of questions.

“Who was it?” a firefighter asked.

“It was sadly, Chad!”  The Chief said.

After they got to the trucks, a sense of quietness was over the men in the truck.

“Hope he’s okay,” one firefighter said.

“Hope so…” the engineer.

When they got to the station, they went straight to bed because it was 02:00 in the morning.  As they went to bed, they all prayed for Chad to come to a recovery and be back to join them in the job.

It was 06:00 and the Chief had news…

“Chad…did not make it through the night,” the Chief said in a heart broken tone.

“This is a reminder that a regular 911 call can be our last call,”  Chief said to the crew.

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