PHOTO: They save your homes.
When a call comes in about a raging fire, they jump in the engine, race to the scene, blast water hoses into the flames and battle to keep a home from burning down.
“That’s what we train for—that’s the exciting part of our job,” said Ashley Losch, of the Glendale Fire Department.
But those are the rare calls. For the most part, firefighters are the last line of defense, fighting to keep people from crossing over from life to death.
Glendale firefighters do CPR on infants pulled from pools, plug gushing gunshot wounds and cut teenagers out of car wrecks.
“And then we’re holding their hand on the way to the hospital while they’re asking us not to let them die,” Losch said.
For decades, the mentality in Glendale was the same as at fire departments around the country: If you can’t take the tough calls, go get an office job.