Posted: 12/4/2006 8:33:17 AM EDT
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Antioch firefighters find missing Wisconsin teen Posted Monday, December 04, 2006 WHEATLAND, Wis. -- Authorities found a 13-year-old boy in a deep hypothermic state but safe Sunday after he went missing for nearly 10 hours in freezing weather while on a hunting excursion. "Who will ever know, but I don't think he had that much longer," Assistant Wheatland Fire Chief Dennis Floeter said Sunday. Two Antioch firefighters, who were part of a large search group, found Ben Maerzke of Kenosha laying in the snow at about 1:40 a.m. Sunday about a quarter of a mile from where rescuers stationed their command post, Sgt. Horace Staples of the Kenosha County sheriff's office and Floeter said. Staples said the boy was coherent but about to fall asleep and in a deep hypothermic state when firefighters found him in the 1,000-acre New Munster Wildlife Area. The boy told a sheriff's sergeant, "I hope I make it," Staples said. He was taken to Memorial Hospital in Burlington. His condition was not immediately released Sunday. National Weather Service meteorologist Rudy Schaar said highs Saturday in the area were in the upper 20s and lows into Sunday morning were in the low single digits. The boy was last seen at 4 p.m. while participating in a deer drive with his father and other relatives. He was helping and did not have a license or a weapon. The hunting party alerted law enforcement that Maerzke was missing about 7 p.m. Saturday after he failed to return to a meeting place. More than 100 rescue personnel, officials from the Department of Natural Resources and area citizens helped in the search. |
I guess it depends on definitions. A whole bunch of volunteer firefighters left their families, warm houses and warm beds to go out and search the woods in sub freezing temperatures at one in the morning for a boy they had never met. Then after they found him, most of them went home, tried to warm up a bit, changed clothes and went in to their paying jobs. You're right in that they certainly don't consider it heroic, they just consider it to be what they always do when the pager goes off. Structure fire, MVC, missing child, whatever. Go do the job. The vast majority of what vollie firefighters do isn't the 'Backdraft', "you go, we go" crap that most people think of as heroic. It tends to be nasty crap like trudging through the woods in 10 degree weather looking for a kid or walking around with a piss can and a broom fighting a brush fire in henderd degree heat or trudging up three flights of stairs in 25 pounds of turn outs and 20 pounds of air pack carrying a 40 pound smoke ejector. It tends to be sweeping the glass and metal and plastic pieces out of the roadway after a MVC, or carrying the 300 pound woman down the stairs while the EMS crew spike a line and grabs the monitor. It tends to be yet another tuesday night drill practicing tanker relays or assisted pumping ihnstead of going out to dinner with your wife. It tends to be trying to stay awake at your "real" job the morning after manning a defensive line at a structure fire in a neighboring jurisdiction all night. These are some of the people who make shit work on a day in day out basis on our society. Heros, each and every one. |
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We had a missing kid in our town quite a while back. He was deaf, so it was going to be harder than usual finding him. Firefighters and police went door to door passing out badges and deputizing the men to help look for him. Normally it wouldn't be that dramatic, but they wanted volunteers to have official looking badges so they wouldn't get in trouble knocking on people's doors and asking questions so late at night. Did sweeps through the woods, people's yards, everywhere. They finally found him asleep in the trunk of his parent's car. He'd climbed in there to play hide-and-seek and fallen asleep. He woke up when they popped the lid to check in there and was rather confused why there were so many people around with flashlights and firetrucks. 
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Those guys are heroes too. I remember a tragic event about a year ago where three young boys were playing in the family yard and vanished without a trace. They found them a couple of days later locked in the trunk of an old car parked in the back yard... all three smothered to death. They were playing hide-n-seek and locked themselves in the trunk and couldn't get out. You've got to watch your children every minute, it only takes a moment and they can be gone. |