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DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM
Deputy Fire Chief John R.K. Clark is a former Sandy Beach lifeguard and author of several books about Hawaii's beaches. His latest is "Hawai'i Place Names: Shores, Beaches, and Surf Sites."
To know that lives and property are in danger, but to be unable to help -- that is a firefighter's greatest frustration. The Firefighter
"We wanted to stand alongside New York's firefighters, working 'the pile,' uncovering what life might have survived that devastation, helping to make that city whole again."
By John R.K. Clark
Deputy chief, Honolulu Fire Department
Along with the police and Emergency Medical Services, we are on duty 24/7 and are poised in our communities to be on the scene of an alarm within minutes. We fight the fires, effect the rescues, start the process of bringing order to chaos.
[ WE REMEMBER ]
To be "first responders" is not just in our training, it is in our nature, and key to why we became firefighters. But last Sept. 11, all we could do was watch, from thousands of miles away.
Firefighters learn early to package our emotions so we can do our jobs in highly charged situations that routinely involve death and destruction. If we didn't, we'd be as dysfunctional as the victims and of no use to anyone. But this was not a time to keep feelings hidden. We had our anger, an outrage shared with the greater community. Mostly, however, there was a real sense of helplessness, a real sense of frustration.
We wanted to be there, we wanted to stand alongside New York's firefighters, working "the pile," uncovering what life might have survived that devastation, helping to make that city whole again.
As the weeks passed, we learned that we could be a part of the healing. From December to February, we were deeply involved in the "Sharing Aloha" program that brought to Hawaii 800 survivors -- spouses, children and parents of lost firefighters, and firefighters who'd lost good friends, brothers and fathers.
When they came here, the wounds weren't healed at all, the emotions were still intense, the anger and the hurt and the pain.
"Sharing Aloha" physically removed them from New York and its scars. It gave them an opportunity to relax and talk to those of us in the fire service who could relate to what they had gone through. I think we made a difference and helped them to leave some of the grief behind.
When King Kamehameha III established the Honolulu Fire Department in 1851, his marching orders were simple: Save lives and protect property. Today, our mission is exactly the same, but society is more complex. Our job involves more than organizing bucket brigades to carry water from a stream to a burning house.
We know that the work we do is dangerous, and 9/11 brought the warning home. Every firefighter here realized immediately that if such a devastating attack had occurred in Honolulu, we would have suffered losses that we cannot begin to comprehend. We know what it is to lose a single firefighter, but to lose a large percentage of your department is something we can't even imagine.
In the aftermath of 9/11, every firefighter has assessed his or her career and the dangers it involves. Families and friends have said, "If you've got the time to retire, get out now. Why chance it? Why tempt fate? Go!" The majority of us, though, have stuck to our career game plans.
As firefighters we knew what we were getting into when we took our oaths of office, and we take pride in serving as professional first responders. We consider it a privilege to do the work we do, and we will continue to follow the marching orders we received more than 150 years ago, to do whatever it takes to save lives and protect property.
