Three mark 30 years as city firefighters

Charles Werner, a third-generation firefighter, practically has the career built into his genes. Peter Carpenter started volunteering at age 15 after the Boy Scouts laid a foundation for community service in him. And until he went to college, David Hartman didn’t know he could be a fire station volunteer — until an old man swaying in a rocking chair outside of Harrisonburg’s Fire Department told him otherwise.

Three different backgrounds led these men to the same place in the spring of 1978 — the Charlottesville Fire Department — to become career firefighters. They are the three remaining firefighters from their eight-member recruiting class.

“I’m gonna stay as long as I’m having fun,” said Werner, who became the department’s fire chief in 2005.

It began that May. Werner, Carpenter and Hartman, between 18 and 20 years old, had been offered jobs around the same time and were beginning their four-week recruitment training. Besides doing a written test and an interview with the chief and captains, the training included pulling weights across a parking lot, running a mile-and-a-half in less than 15 minutes and climbing 100-foot ladders.

The recruit classes still go on, but not nearly as often, Werner said.

As with any significant span of time, several things about the city department have changed. In three decades, the department has expanded to 89 career personnel and 25 volunteers, and in 2007 it became one of eight Virginia fire departments to be internationally accredited by the nonprofit Commission on Fire Accreditation International.

Werner added that the criteria for becoming a firefighter — volunteer or career — has become much more rigorous. Training is more comprehensive and it is mandatory to have emergency medical technician certifications.

Continuous upgrades

Plus, safety equipment is continuously upgraded and new gadgets are always in the making: upgraded exhaust systems for the base, engine airbags and thermal image cameras that allow them to see in zero visibility — as real fires are not how they are depicted in the movies — are just a few.

“Time in smoke is of the essence,” said Carpenter, a battalion chief, about the cameras. The cameras cut searching times in live fires by 50 percent.

Former Fire Chief and current City Council member Julian Taliaferro — who hired Werner, Carpenter and Hartman in 1978 — said he thinks technology will become so advanced that the way firefighters respond to fires will be completely different.

“I think one day you’ll be able to have systems in a city where you can detect temperature changes,” said Taliaferro, who retired from the department in 2005 after being fire chief for 34 years.

Yet some things never do change. All three say it’s impossible to know what to expect each day on the job — just like on their first day of recruit class.

Hartman, now a battalion chief, said, “[The fires are] all tragic in different ways. You’ve never seen everything.”

Taliaferro agreed.

“You never know what’s coming around the corner,” he said. “A lot of strange things happen.”

Werner, Carpenter and Hartman can reminisce about a seemingly infinite number of fires, each more bizarre than the next — from getting electrically shocked and then nearly getting shot as revolver rounds went off in a trailer fire (that was Carpenter) to seeing a man walk out of a shed on fire.

As the memories of certain fires triggered more memories, a particular one stuck out as one of the most bewildering any of them has seen.

Huge blaze

It was the fall of 1979, just over a year since they had joined, when they responded to a call from an Albemarle County housing complex called North Berkshire Apartments. That afternoon, more than one-and-a-half blocks were up in flames.

Everyone had an incredulous first reaction.

“It was a pretty unusual event,” Werner said. The question running through all their heads, he said, was, “Where do I start first?”

Hartman was at the rescue squad three miles away, and said the smoke was right in front of him as he went to the scene.

“You couldn’t figure out what happened,” Hartman said.

It took 24 hours to get the blaze completely out. The department soon ascertained that the fire was caused by a surge of pressure in the central gas line. Contractors had been working on it and the pressure regulator broke, sending an extremely powerful rush of gas to many of the units. Fortunately, because of the time of day, many residents were not home and there were no fatalities as a result.

Carpenter said it wasn’t the 72 simultaneously-ablaze units that make him remember that fire. Instead, it was “just the feeling of being overwhelmed.”

But there are other incidents, he added, that they have chosen to forget because they were so traumatic.

“You do tend to let some of them go,” Hartman said.

All of them will attest that actual fires have decreased because of stricter building codes, increased smoke-detector installation and general improved fire safety. Only one fire fatality has occurred in the city in the last 11 years — on March 18, 2007, when a fire engulfed a duplex on Lewis Mountain Road near the University of Virginia, killing a 25-year-old man.

The calls have still increased four-fold, from 1,500 to 6,000 per year — which Werner said is partly because of city growth but also because 50 percent of calls are EMS-related, which they now respond to.

Calls winding down

The number of calls that Werner, Hartman and Carpenter themselves have run have decreased since their beginning days. Hartman said when you’re young and new, you want to respond to as many calls as possible.

“We used to be up all night long,” he said.

But the physical demand and emotional stress that comes with the job will sooner or later influence the ability to run call after call. Werner said the No. 1 killer of firefighters is heart attack, a trend that has not changed since he joined the department. Carpenter said he has had knee operations, hernia operations and slight hearing loss.

“It does take a toll on your body,” Carpenter said, adding that concern also increases with age.

Before, he said, “I had no fear. It didn’t matter how big, how hot.” Now they go out on the more serious calls when more than one engine responds.

So why have these three stuck around for this long? Hartman said part of it is because of the different career mentality when they started, where job mobility was not as big of a concern and personal lives were shaped around work.

“People back then were not as quick to move around as they are now,” he said.

However, Werner said being a firefighter indicates that each person relies on everyone else, and the Charlottesville Fire Department has been a great team.

When you love what you do, Carpenter said, “It makes it easy to come to work.”

Werner added, “It’s scary to think that I’m one of the oldest guys here.” Carpenter and Hartman are eligible for retirement, and Werner will be next year.

“It doesn’t feel like 30 years.”