Legislature takes notice of heroes among us

Some of the most amazing men and women in the Mat-Su Borough are those who train and work for the Valley’s various fire departments. In fact, Emergency Services is the largest department within the borough. While these volunteers receive a stipend for responding and training to do this work, most also have full-time jobs.

In Anchorage, firefighting is a full-time job. But in the Valley, nearly all of our firefighters have different day jobs.

Here, the men and women who suit up and enter burning buildings, who dive into icy water to rescue trapped motorists and who battle wind and freezing temperatures to protect dozens of homes in a subdivision volunteer to do this work.

These men and women are paid to acquire rescue training, but when they risk their lives, health and safety on our behalf, they’re doing so as volunteers.

It takes a hero cut of special cloth to volunteer to run into a burning building or put on a dry suit and sink beneath the dark, icy water to save another’s life.

Frontiersman staff members were on-scene with fire crews during both the Mat Maid fire on Aug. 7, 2012, and the Cedar Hills subdivision fire on Nov. 29, 2012. Without the quick work of the Palmer Fire Department — and the other departments across the Mat-Su and Anchorage boroughs — that rendered mutual aid, these stories might well have had tragic and disastrous endings.

In August 2012, the fire was dangerously near Crowley’s fuel distribution center in downtown Palmer. Every ladder truck in the borough was on scene spraying water on the fire from above by the time we arrived that morning.

In November 2012, Frontiersman photographer Robert DeBerry nearly became part of the story when the wind shifted and flames surrounded his vehicle. We owe our own thanks to the Forestry Division crews that ran to his aid and stomped the flames out so DeBerry could move his Jetta to safer ground.

The winds that day combined with cold weather to freeze water lines and firefighters working to save lives and property as wind gusts topped 80 mph.

On days like this, Mother Nature can turn one spark from a trailer blown over by gale force winds into a conflagration that threatens 150 to 200 acres, dozens of homes and hundreds of lives. It happened in an instant.

What happened nearly as rapidly was the skilled response from our neighbors in yellow fire coats and pants. We survived with no loss of life and no serious injuries. But without rescue crews’ efforts this day it seems clear our fate could have been much, much different.

The efforts of the Palmer Fire Department in responding to the Mat Maid and Cedar Hills fires earned the department special recognition from the 28th Alaska State Legislature in a Feb. 22 proclamation sponsored by Rep. Shelley Hughes.

“They evacuated a neighborhood, closed down roads and without a doubt saved lives,” we wrote in a Nov. 30, 2012, editorial acknowledging the effort.

We second that notion again today, and add our kudos to the well-deserved praise from the 28th Alaska Legislature.