It's just after 4 a.m. on a Sunday, and a woman's calm voice pours through an intercom in Station 2 of the Salt Lake City Fire Department. Lights automatically flicker on, and there is a stirring in the second-floor dorm.
It's the sixth call to Rescue Engine 2 in a 24-hour shift. This time the emergency is in the Avenues, where a suicidal man may have overdosed on sleeping pills.
Firefighter/paramedic Tony Bickmore wakes from a light sleep, is dressed in an instant and down the fire pole, joining three crew members and a paramedic trainee.
Back at home, Bickmore's wife, Anne Marie, an emergency-room nurse at LDS Hospital, and three of their four children are asleep — the fourth is away at college in New York. Bickmore admits that one of the hardest things about his schedule is being away from his family for 24 hours at a time.
At the scene, Capt. Jeff Spencer and engineer Bill Nelson wait outside a third-floor apartment as Bickmore and co-worker Dave Vialpando examine a man inside.
"You standin' up sleepin'?" asks Spencer, leaning on the handrail at the bottom of the stairs.
"What makes you think I'm alive?" replies Nelson, his back against the wall a few feet up.
The suicidal man is eventually left in the care of an ambulance crew and paramedics from Station 1, who arrived just before Bickmore and his crew. It's about 4:15 in the morning, and it will turn out to be the last call of an unusually quiet shift. Sleep will soon be the final order of the night.
Bickmore, a firefighter for 18 years, and more than 300 men and women — there are five females in the department — carry on a tradition in Salt Lake City that dates back 150 years to a time when a group of residents gathered to fight the "ravages of fire," according to a yearbook published by the Salt Lake City Firemen's Relief Association. By 1879, volunteers were making 25 cents per hour, and three years later the first full-time department was born.
Bickmore is secretary/treasurer for the Professional Firefighters of Utah, a state labor organization and one of 11 such unions in the state. Not all Salt Lake City firefighters, however, belong to unions.
Salt Lake City firefighters work in shifts called platoons and are at their stations for 24 hours at a time with one or more days off in between. Many, if not most, have side jobs. A quick poll in the kitchen of Station 2 reveals a "Mr. Mom," a construction worker, a wood craftsman, an Urban Search and Rescue worker and Bickmore, who runs a tile business with his wife.
The city's 13 active stations are these firefighters' second homes, and their co-workers are like family.
"There's not anything any of us wouldn't do for each other," says Bickmore of the eight men in Platoon A for Station 2. "My wife calls it a 'Boys Club,' " he laughs. But in that "club" nationwide, says his wife of 19 years, the divorce rate is about 50 percent.
"Let me tell you, it's not that easy," says Anne Marie Bickmore as she prepares to leave for work, knowing her husband is already into his second 24-hour shift in three days, with a day in between to rest. If it's not the long hours away from home, it's often the lack of communication that tears apart families.
If police have their "Blue Wall" of silence, firefighters may have a kind of "Red Wall." Many let the stresses of their job build up by not "unloading" or talking about it at home, choosing on their own or at the wishes of a spouse to leave it all parked at work along with their gleaming red fire engines.
"Tony and I never have that," says his wife. She calls herself a part of her husband's support system, one who helps him work through calls where, for example, someone dies, leaving behind a longtime spouse. "That just tears Tony up, but he works through it, puts it on the table and moves on."
Those firefighters who do maintain the silence and don't work through difficult work-related issues are contributing to an alarming rise in domestic and workplace violence, Anne Marie Bickmore says, citing discussions of the topic at international union meetings and a case out of Mississippi in which a firefighter killed his wife and some of his co-workers.
In Canada, she adds, 12-hour shifts have done wonders for morale among firefighters, which can mean more peace in the workplace and at home. New York is one of the few U.S. cities where full-time firefighters work 12-hour shifts. Most cities are unable to fund the extra platoons needed to cover each shift.
In the Bickmore house, conversations of gore, death and destruction often flow around the dinner table, but it's more of a self-sustaining measure that keeps their family close. Anne Marie Bickmore was also the first woman to lobby on the floor of a firefighters' union meeting — her goal: to sustain a spousal support group.
"We've tried really hard to let the men be aware of the fact that being a firefighter is not a career or job, it's a lifestyle," Anne Marie Bickmore says. She admits there can be very little social life outside the fire department. "You have to have harmony."
Back at Station 2, harmony is evident throughout the day.
Dispelling a myth that all firefighters do is sit around watching TV and waiting, Bickmore and the others move about and beyond the station throughout the day in a hum of constant activity.
Firefighters are known for their culinary prowess, and meal planning is a "family" affair. Several pitch in on shopping for the day's meal — Saturday's bill is $60 — each helping to prepare a meal or clean up afterward.
Throughout the day they're cleaning, on the phone, working on the computer, lifting weights, testing equipment or discussing politics as it affects firefighters. Saturday is also set aside for supervised training, a drill in which firefighters from five different stations battle man-made smoke to rescue two of their own in a mock blaze staged at an old city-owned loading dock near 600 West and 300 South.
And in between it all, they risk life and limb fighting real fires and help heal and care for the city's sick and dying.
"There's just not that many fires anymore," says Bickmore, almost with a sense of longing in his voice — which may be one reason so many firefighters these days have a paramedic's license.
At 10:30 a.m., Platoon A at Station 2 responds to a call of respiratory distress at an apartment just behind the station. The woman is brought to the hospital in an ambulance.
At about 5 p.m., Rescue Engine 2 is called to the TRAX station between the Crossroads and ZCMI malls to a man who may have just had a seizure and claims to be suicidal. Just before 6 p.m., they're at the Salt Lake Home, an assisted-living center, helping a blind woman upset physically and emotionally over a change in her medication. Residents of the home peer out the windows as one of their own is taken away in an ambulance.
As Nelson tries to finish his evening meal, a call comes in at 8 p.m. to respond to the Salt Lake Community Shelter at 210 S. Rio Grande St., where a 38-year-old male is complaining of chest pains. People are hanging around outside, a young couple kiss and two LDS missionaries are trying to get inside as Bickmore supervises the paramedic trainee.
In the ambulance, the man's blood is drawn, and he tells of how he lost $26,000 in Las Vegas in a poker tournament, felt like he would die there and hopped a freight train to Salt Lake City in search of work.
At about 9 p.m., the crew responds to an Avenues condominium where a young woman in extreme pain lies in a fetal position on the floor, her cell phone by her side. Bickmore learns the woman is recently divorced, under a lot of stress, has not been eating well and has a history of kidney stones. She is brought to LDS Hospital, where the man from the earlier TRAX station call is walking around in a patient gown, headed outside for a cigarette.
Only one more call will come — the 4 a.m. overdose — before the crew returns to the station for a few hours' sleep. At about 8:30 a.m., Bickmore and his second family say goodbye, leaving one home for another.
E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com