Firefighters really are a special kind of breed.
We had a field exercise today, one where we went through all our options for generating our own power during a blackout. On our parking lot. Nothing but stone and concrete, not a single tree in sight. During a historic heatwave in Europe.
Yes, it had been planned long in advance. But we could have moved into the basement and gone through what our backup power supply can do without having to run it in the full afternoon sun.
I stood there, right next to that heat-emitting monster, and watched my instructor pant through an explanation of electrical connections and energy recovery systems, sweat running down his flushed forehead, and thought: "Oh. Oh, this is why we're dropping like flies by the time we're sixty."
Maybe it isn't just the exposure or the accidents. Maybe it really is our stubbornness, pride, sense of duty and most of all fixedness.
Maybe that what's going to carry so many of us to an early grave.
