When the call came in for an active structure fire, Jeremy Bourasa responded as any dedicated St. Paul Park firefighter would. He joined first responders from Cottage Grove, Newport and Woodbury to contain an ugly inferno that all but destroyed a home at Hidden Valley Terrace in Cottage Grove.
He'd been married less than an hour.
Bourasa and his fiancée, Krista Boland, had just exchanged vows Sept. 1 at the St. Paul Park fire station, where he works as a paid-on-call volunteer firefighter.
"We have an in-house alarm throughout all Washington County," Bourasa said. "It's a certain tone that tells us if it's a medical or a fire. The dispatcher came on. They were calling for mutual aid."
At first, the bride looked ready to chew a brick. But she wasn't going to stand in his way. Fire had taken its toll on her own family. "We actually talked about what if they were to get a call the day of the wedding ahead of time and I told him, 'You better not even think about trying to leave to a call on our day,'" Boland recalled.