Remarks by President Biden at the Summit on Fire Prevention and Control
OCTOBER 11, 2022
Location: Eisenhower Executive Office Building

2:56 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Doctor, thank you very, very much.  It’s very gracious of you.  I appreciate it.  And the U.S. Fire Administration is doing a great job. 

Look, I want to take this opportunity to thank you all, to — for an opportunity to speak at this summit.

And it’s wonderful to see so many good friends, you know, sitting out there looking.  Eddy — Ed Kelly.  And I think President Black is there.  Kevin, I hope — I — I can’t quite see what — I can’t see you out — in the front there, I think.

And I actually wish I could be there with you in person.  And you know I mean it.

You know, and I’ve — I’ve had to pay respects with you this past weekend on the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial.

Thirty years ago — God, it seems like thirty years ago.  Thirty years ago, I was the original co-sponsor with Paul Sarbanes and others of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation Act.  And over the years, I’ve spoken to — at too many — too many funerals for fallen firefighters.  From the national events like the memorial of Arizona 19 Hotshots in 2013, to the individuals in my home state that unfortunately are too numerous to name.

And each one — each one of you is a hero to the community.  You’ve touched people’s lives.  So I’d — I’d like to take a moment at the top here to honor the lives we’ve lost of those in the past two years, including from COVID — 135 on-duty firefighters in 2021, another 77 to date in 20- — 2022.

And it’s a — it’s an acute reminder of the risk firefighters bear and, quite frankly, of their bravery.  You’re the only ones who run toward flames and not away from them when that fire bell rings. 

And you — look, you know, many of you — many of you heard me say before: First, God made man.  Then he made a few firefighters.  God made man, and then he made a few firefighters.

I grew up in Claymont, Delaware.  And across — I went to a little school called Holy Rosary grade school across from the Claymont firehall.  And all my buddies, they came — either became a firefighter, a cop, or a priest.  I wasn’t qualified for any of them, so here I am.

But — (laughs) — you know, it’s truly amazing that an estimated 1,041,200 local and municipal firefighters — 65 percent of you are volunteers.  And I’m proud to say in Delaware, in my home state, it’s 98.3 percent of all firefighters are volunteer firefighters. 

And by the way, I know you’re all having trouble keeping — because of COVID and because of the — the schedules people have these days — getting — attracting enough volunteers to man — man all the stations.  You’re the heart of the community.

You know, people don’t appreciate you until they need you.  But then they do, and you’re always there. 

Firefighters have saved my life and the life of my family.  I want to just tell you for a moment — I know a lot of you know from — if anyone is from Delaware there knows — you know, way back in 1972, before I got sworn in, my family — my wife was Christmas shopping with my three children and — and a tractor trailer — they got in an accident — broadsided, and killed my wife, killed my daughter.  And my two boys, who were then almost three and almost four, were on top of their dead sister and mother.  And it took the Jaws of Life from my local fire department volunteers to get them out and get them to the hospital.  And it saved their lives.

In addition to that, what happened was — I was — I was doing “Meet the Press,” and lightning struck a little pond behind my house, came up through the ground, into the air conditioning system.  Ended up generating this thick, black smoke literally — literally that — of those proportions.  And from the basement to the third floor, the attic, everything was ruined.  And the kitchen floor — we almost lost a couple firefighters, they tell me, because the kitchen floor was — the — burning between beams in the house, in addition to almost collapsed into the basement.

And then — and then I was — I got rushed to the hospital for a — it turned out to be almost a nine-hour operation with a cranial aneurism — in the middle of a snowstorm by my fire company.  They got me down.  They saved my life.  And so, I owe you.  And so many other Americans owe you as well, so many families.