Bob Upson operating Ladder 1 at the Center Street Fire, March 5, 1987, Courtesy of the Southington Observer
On March 5, 1987, the Southington Fire Department responded to a fire that led to four fatalities; three of them young children. This event was a major influence on my 31-year career as a firefighter and my second career as a fire protection engineer and fire sprinkler advocate.
Courtesy of Lee Dibble
“Some positive shifts are epiphanies; lightning strokes that come unheralded out of a cloudless sky, leaving change and renewal in their wake. Others happen unnoticed over time; meandering journeys that twist up and down through a landscape of hills and valleys that only reveal in hindsight that we have crossed mountains unaware. My own shift was the latter. I didn’t really see it until after I had retired from the fire department and moved on to my second career.”
Also available from the Your Shift Matters series:
[amazon_link asins=’1513623729′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’AMZN-US-WyvernHall’ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’1e9f4a12-1000-11e8-a2f4-87f4f9e0fdc2′]