It doesn’t make any more or less sense just because it was a routine call.
Wooden palettes had ignited behind a Harborcreek plastics firm, and like dozens of times before, 24-year old Lawrence Park Deputy Fire Chief Mike Crotty answered.
A plastics plant can contain some volatile materials, but with the fire on the outside of the building the main concern was to get water up on the roof to keep flames from getting under the eaves and into the building.
So an aerial ladder truck was called in, one capable of lifting a fire hose 160 feet into the air to spray water down on the building’s roof and side.
Some called it a collapse.
Others said the heavy metal pipe simply broke off under the heavy water pressure.
Either way, when the falling metal struck the Deputy Chief in the back as he was attempting to save the property, a family with a history of service paid the ultimate price for others.
Mike Crotty’s family is no stranger to the fire service. His uncle Joe is the Chief of the Titusville Fire Department. His uncle Tim works with the Hazardous Materials Team. His cousins are the Rinns, another family with a long history of captains and chiefs in the Erie Fire Department.
And in fact both Joe and Tim served as past Chiefs for Lawrence Park.
It doesn’t make any more or less sense that Mike had just been hired to join the Erie Fire Department.
It doesn’t matter that this would have been one of his last calls as a volunteer.
What mattered is that the alarm went off, that someone needed help and he answered.
That’s what guys like Mike Crotty do.
Sometime soon the dress coats will come out and the brass polished.
Hundreds of firefighters will come to Lawrence Park to pay their last respects.
Not because they knew Mike Crotty, but because they are Mike Crotty.
They get out of bed, or leave work or kiss their kids goodbye and risk their lives for others, many without a nickel of pay.
And they know, somewhere deep down, that it could happen to them, too.
That one day their Last Call could come, because they also know, that it could happen to anybody.