The Volunteers That Keep 80% Of America Safe
Chuck responded a while ago in email to not only my post on dangerous jobs but the article I linked to. In the following text, he is not addressing me but rather the article's author, Douglas Gantenbein: “Firefighting is dangerous. You don't bother to look at the injuries, the injuries that a lot of us shrug off and just keep going with. You mock firefighters for dying because of heart attacks, ignoring that most of them are the volunteers that keep 80% of America safe. Your neighbors and your friends, and maybe your family. And keeping you and yours safe gives about 50 firefighters a year a fatal heart attack. And you dare to mock them!” He said in the email that forestry workers are not heroes because they don't go into buildings and save lives. True, but the point of my post, and Gantenbein's article is that the death rate due to their occupation is not necessarily the highest, and those that have higher death rates don't ask for heroes' ceremonies. Firefighters may be heroes, and there's no question that firefighting is dangerous, but anybody who says their job is the most dangerous in the United States needs to be fact-checked. (I say this just as I hear the sirens of a firetruck going past my apartment building. How about that.)
