Capt. Jamie Meyer knows firefighters love to fight fires.
“But you know somebody’s losing something, too,” said Meyer, who recently retired from the Fremont Fire Department.
Meyer remembers the time a fire gutted a house.
He began taking pictures off a wall so firefighters wouldn’t knock them down by accident.
“I stacked them on what was left of the couch and the homeowner came in and started to cry,” he said.
Meyer offered tender words.
“I’m sorry you’ve lost everything,” he said.
The woman replied: “No, you’re saving my pictures.”
That memory still touches Meyer’s heart.
“It’s those little moments that really make an impression on you,” he said. “You don’t realize the good impact you’re making on somebody by doing just little things like that.”
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He offers some advice:
“Don’t overlook the little things, because those can have some of the biggest impacts on people.”
Meyer is well aware of the impact the Fremont Fire Department has had on local residents.
And how well local firefighters have been trained.
Meyer said firefighters went through a grain bin rescue class with an Oklahoma company prior to a grain bin extrication a few years ago.
“They (the company) said we were one of the very few departments in the country that have done that type of recovery,” he said.
Meyer said the department fights fires, handles car accidents, provides Emergency Medical Services with paramedics and does so much more.
“We’re also very technical in our training with auto extrication, scuba diving, ice rescue and high angle, confined space and trench rescue,” Meyer said. “It’s a one-call-pretty-much-gets-it-all. These guys are trained to do some very technical things.”
Overall, firefighters must have a multitude of skills and retain vast amounts of knowledge.
They must understand fire behavior, water patterns, building construction and the city’s layout. They must be able to drive the mammoth trucks, cut a hole in a roof with a chain saw and not fall from a ladder and work in confined spaces. They cut cars apart and clean up gas spills.
In addition, they tend to the sick, the frightened, the severely injured and the intoxicated.
They deal with hazardous materials, heart-wrenching traffic accidents, long hours and loss. They know what it is to be surrounded by sobbing family members as they try to save a loved one.
Firefighters must think with their hearts — and on their feet.
“You have to be extremely smart about this job,” Meyer said. “It’s more than just putting the wet stuff on the red stuff.”
Throughout his career, Meyer received a good deal of education and training.
He earned his associate’s degree in fire science from Southeast Community College in Lincoln in the early 1990s.
The fire department started its paramedic service for the City of Fremont in 1995. Meyer was among the first group of paramedics and would serve 26 years in that capacity.
In the mid-1990s, Meyer along with Jeff Schlautman and Dave Wordekemper, became medics for the Emergency Response Unit with local law enforcement personnel.
Meyer believes the men were some of the first in the state to train along with police for high risk calls and local medics still do so today.
He’s appreciated working with police and the bond it’s built between the departments.
Meyer taught a myriad of firefighter classes for what’s now the training division of the State Fire Marshal’s Office from 1991-2016, and also taught at Nebraska Fire School in Grand Island.
He taught CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and Advanced Cardiac Life Support at the local hospital in the 1990s.
Meyer believes his teaching helped keep him sharp on his firefighting skills.
He said firefighters train all the time for emergencies and when a situation arises, they fall back on that training.
And there are times, when a firefighter does something simple like take pictures off a wall for someone who’s lost everything else.