A firefighter from Co Tyrone has spoken of his pride at the lives he saved during his time with the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service.
Denis Kelly from Cookstown retired from the fire service last month after 32 years’ service.
Whilst there were many highs and lows during his time there, he says one of the most rewarding was knowing that you had saved people whose lives were under threat.
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Much of Denis’ career was devoted to responding to road traffic collisions and he took great pride in getting people out of danger.
“I got massive satisfaction out of helping people trapped in road traffic collisions and extracating them out of a car and giving them a second chance at life,” Denis told MyTyrone.
“I have played a part in comforting somebody in a car and reassuring them that we’re doing the job that we need to do.
“I recall we were called out to a road traffic collision around 1995 just outside Cookstown where a woman had come around a corner and rolled the car and hit a telegraph pole, which came in and impaled her inside the car.
“We managed to get her out anyway and I remember her coming back into the station and thanking the crew that day for doing a sterling job and saving her life, because she was definitely going to die.
“We know we saved her life that day.
“I have also seen the other side where people who didn’t get a second chance at life."
He continued: “My first fatality was in November 1990 and that has never left me for the 30 odd years that I have been in the fire service.
“Other names locally come to me and away back then there was no such thing as mental health or counseling and stuff like that.
“It was only in the 1990s when we started to focus slightly on mental health and now we would be up there in terms of looking after our people in the fire service."
The 57-year-old said he first went into the role after living beside the fire station on Chapel Street in the town, and watched the firefighters called out on a regular basis.
He said it was the only thing he wanted to do after that, and later on got great satisfaction of seeing the development of younger firefighters.
“I had no intentions of being a firefighter when I was a child but when I lived next door to the station and got speaking to some of the guys and that’s what enticed me to join.
“From there it became one of those addictive type of adrenaline rushes where you turn out to respond to things like that.
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“There’s nothing like the thrill of putting on breathing apparatus and going into someone’s house to extinguish a fire and remove someone from the house.
“I loved the whole idea of taking a person in off the street with absolutely zero skills in firefighting and spending 18 weeks training with them and getting them up to a good confident level.
“I liked to see that development and growth of people in the training.”
Having spent time working across several different stations across Northern Ireland during his three decades of service before returning to his local town to see out his career.
He reached the rank of Crew Commander for his on call service and Watch Commander for his full time service, a role where his son Barrie has also reached as he follows in his father’s footsteps.
“Barrie has now taken over my role in the fire service, he joined in 2013 and he now serves as a Watch Commander in the same area as me.
“So he’s carrying on the baton as such.
“As a part time firefighter in your own town, you only respond when your pager goes off and you could be sitting down eating your Christmas dinner and your pager goes off and you have to go.
“That’s just the nature of it and I’m incredibly grateful to my wife Janet and my family and colleagues who have supported me.”
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