Whether or not you have experienced a fire, everyone knows about the men and women that risk their lives to put fires out. These brave firefighters risk their lives to save lives and stop the destruction of property. There is controversy when it comes to the firefighters risking their lives to protect property when no lives are at risk but their own.
Timothy Egan, in his 2013 article “New West, Old Story”, explains the firefighters’ history, by showing these people as heroes of the country who risk their lives to save people and their homes. Timothy starts his article by telling a real story of 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots who risk their live and some of them die trying to save a small community there. Even though those people have no fault of the combustion, they would lose their lives to fight the fire.
The author’s main argument is all about knowing why those heroes should die without holding any responsibility in what happened. Then the author goes along in asking all property owners in that community to answer his question why do these men die over empty houses. After that, he covers the firefighters who died trying to protect people in Sep, 11. Then, he focuses on blaming the homeowners in that area for expecting good people die to protect their property, which is not worth a life.
Again, the author concludes his article by questioning what those heroes died for and quoting Norman Maclean “a tragedy where nothing much was left of the elite who came from the sky but courage struggling for oxygen.” In “New West, Old Story” this question, why those heroes die, is posed and arguments about firefighter is risking their lives for protecting property, people shouldn’t expect people die protecting them and their stuff, are given. While Egan argues that firefighters shouldn’t risk their live for saving property, I believe that firefighters should attempt to extinguish fires even if there are no lives at risk because property will only be fuel causing the fires to spread doing more damage than necessary.
When it comes to how risky is the firefighter work is, all the firefighter know how much risk would they have of their job. Is a life really worth property and objects? Sure firefighters know what they are getting into but how can people sit around and watch others die for their things? For Egan’s argument about firefighters are risking their live for protecting property, I believe Egan has a good point but he does not provide a solution. In explanation the risk of firefighter’s job, Cindy Quarters, in her article “The Risk of Being a fireman” says that it is very important for the people, who want to be a firefighter, to be aware of the job risks before choosing firefighting as career.
Even with the positive side of the job, those people may get burned. It is true that burns sometimes can be small but they can be fatal at other times (Quarters). Firefighters have to risk their lives to protect property because the property will become fuel to the fire making it spread. Imagine how bad fires would be if firefighters just evacuated the civilians and let them burn. Whole cities would be consumed. Forests without human lives would be totally destroyed. A firefighters is supposed to fight fires with the goal of putting the fire out, regardless if the only lives at risk are their own.
His argument is strong in the sense of his examples but comparing Sep 11 to any other fire incident is ridiculous because of the circumstances. Sep 11 is a tragedy. Many firefighters went into the Twin Towers knowing that they would not come out alive. Their sole purpose was to get as many people out as they could. This tragedy is the perfect example of how Egan views firefighters, men and women to risk their lives to save others. Sep 11 was located in a big city so of course firefighters are going to be on the scene doing their job. A forest fire may have few lives but it has a lot of fuel. New York City has many fire resistant buildings, so letting an empty building burn to the ground would not be the same as letting a forest fire take its course.
People value their stuff and without our stuff we would have nothing and that would be a scary world to live in. Imagine a world in which firefighters let stuff burn out. Every time a fire occurred there would be massive damage and insurance companies would have extremely high premiums. Also it would mean one person’s carelessness could cause a whole neighborhood to burn down. A single case of arson would have tremendous consequences and many lives would be effected. If a school caught fire at night, there would be a serious threat to many people’s education. On the drastic side, the theft rate would rise because of the lack of stuff. People would become more protective of their stuff and there would be a lack of community bonding.
The idea of a firefighter dying for property and others personal belongings is a troubling one, but it is a part of a firefighter’s duty. In “New West, Old Story” Egan presents many arguments to why he believes firefighters should not risk their lives if no one else’s life is at risk. I believe Egan has a good idea but he does not provide convincing points and they do not correlate with each other. Although it is saddening that firefighter’s die over property, they know this may happen when they sign up for the job. Firefighters fight fires no matter what the circumstances are. If a forest catches fire than it is the firefighters job to put that forest fire out.
