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Fireman
Bounces Back From Injury, Trauma |
By Bryant Perkins
NYT Institute
NEW ORLEANS, May 19 - The frantic call came in at
2 a.m. A fire raged into the normally tranquil Washington,
D.C., sky.
First-year firefighter Darryl Green and his comrades
of D.C. Fire Department Engine Company 6, answered
the call.
“Originally I did not even
want to be a firefighter,” Green said. “I
believe God has chosen me for this role.”
Green paused in the middle of his explanation and
started to reminisce about his very first years
on the job. With a grim expression on his face,
he recalled the first injury he suffered on duty.
Eight years ago, Green was responding to the fire
in the northeast section of D.C., a middle-class
residential area. Without hesitation, the then-31-year-old
entered the building, which was already engulfed
in flames.
“Darryl is all about
business when it comes to the job and he’s
dedicated,” said Robert Pearson, Green’s
former supervisor at the Northeast D.C., company,
the second busiest in the nation,
Pushing down flames, as he described it, Green made
his way to the second floor.
“This
may sound crazy but it was the most beautiful thing
I had ever seen,” he said. “The flames
were just billowing out from the rooms.”
In the frenzied process of recovering a dead body,
Green and his fellow firefighters were unaware of
each other’s actions and collided
Green soon found himself pinned to the ground under
the weight of two of his colleagues.
The accident left Green with third-degree burns
on his lower back and left shin. He also suffered
five ligament tears and a torn anterior cruciate
ligament in his knee, which became a permanent injury.
“Injuring yourself is always a risk that
you take, it just becomes part of the job,”
said Green’s father Ernest, a retired firefighter
himself. Ernest Green, now 65, was with the Washington,
D.C. Fire Department for 32 years.
The burns Darryl Green received took a full year-and-a-half
to heal.
As part of his recovery, he underwent surgery.
“With burns like that, a skin graft is
often needed,” said Dr. Marion Jordan, director
of the burn unit at Washington Hospital Center in
Washington, D.C. The center is one of the premier
burn units in the country. Jordan was the chief
surgeon who worked on Green’s burns.
An appreciative Green now has a new outlook because
of the accident.
“Life is precious
and should never be taken for granted,” he
said, “You never know when today could be
your last.”
“Darryl has always
been level-headed about things and has always been
able to bounce back from things,” said wife
of four years, Nicole.
Green’s ability to recuperate would be tested
again three years later, not physically but emotionally.
“The thing I will never forget in all
my years is seeing two young girls die right before
my eye,” Green explained.
The call went out at 11 a.m. for a fire, and again
Green answered the call. The fire engines raced
to the scene. Green was in the second engine that
arrived, and he said he was horrified at what he
saw.
“I got out of the engine only
to look up and see two children banging on the glass
from inside the house,” Green said, drifting
off a bit and looking into the distance.
There was nothing he could do. Green had just pulled
up outside the building. The house was already engulfed
in thick, bellowing smoke and flames.
The mother of the two girls, her husband and four
other children escaped the blaze unharmed.
“It took a while to get over it but I will
never forget it,” Green said.
Green stood up and shook himself off as if shaking
the traumatic image out of his mind. Settling back
down, he smiled and averted his exhausted eyes.
“You know, now that I have been on the
job, I wish I had done it a lot sooner,” he
said about the job.
Despite all that befell Green in his first years
on the job, he is still going strong. “He
is a firefighter’s firefighter,” Nicole
Green said with a chuckle. |
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