Two images that make profoundly vivid the dangers that our first responders face are in Raleigh Fire Capt. Paul Wyatt’s comments about the recent Metropolitan fire: “…the radiant heat was starting to melt my gear. I could smell it.” A firefighter then yelled that a [construction] crane was falling. “All we could see when we looked up was fire and smoke, so we had no idea which way it was falling,” Wyatt said. That peril is rendered all the more human in Wyatt’s next thought.