A Thursday afternoon fire on Warren Street kept Poplar Bluff firefighters busy, and off-duty crews were called back to help fight the blaze.
A person at the scene explained residents don’t know some of the things firefighters have to deal with when they are battling a fire.
While it’s “not really hot yet,” by the time the personnel get their gear on, and begin actually combatting the fire, they are overheating, the bystander said.
People don’t think about things in their yards and homes hindering firefighters from doing their jobs or making their jobs more difficult.
Changing air tanks two or three times becomes tiresome and tough on firefighters.
One firefighter said, “We just make do with what we’ve got,” while admitting they’d risk their “lives in a heartbeat to do whatever it took to keep on going.”
Poplar Bluff City Manager Matt Winters said, “I had the opportunity to be on the scene of a residential house fire. I just want to commend Captain Tuggle and the guys on duty this afternoon for their response to a difficult residential structure fire. In addition to the fire department, two members of the city’s motor pool where on hand and assisted by bringing in water for the firefighters and moving some equipment. “
According to those at the scene “thankfully, everybody was out of the house, but two boys actually went back in to get a dog out. One of them had some singed beard hair and a burn on the arm. Emergency medical services checked on them.”
The amount of things around the outside of the building made it tough to deal with fighting the fire, but “things worked in the firefighters favor today, thankfully,”
EMS and Poplar Bluff motor pool employees were at the scene, and when one of the firefighters’ saws quit, the motor pool crew “jumped right on the problem and solved it.”