Over the past decades our profession has drastically changed. We went from mostly fighting fires to responding to all types of emergencies. Today we are trained and equipped with tools and protective equipment to respond to every conceivable type of emergency. For example, we are first to arrive at terrorist bomb incidents, building collapses, medical emergencies, vehicle accidents, elevator emergencies, natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, snow blizzards. And most importantly the emergency service we provide arrives quickly.
Firefighters arrive first and take control of the emergency.
No one in New York City can do anything within 5 minutes. The response time of an ambulance is 7 minutes, a police car 10 minutes or more. One of the emergencies firefighters respond to throughout the nation and recently throughout the world with the advent of the Urban Search and Rescue Teams, is to save people buried in a structural collapse. Terrorist bombs, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, gas explosions, snow blizzards, renovations and fires, collapse buildings. During these natural and manmade disasters, people are sometimes buried alive under tons of rubble.