The Toughest Day

Lately, I have been having nightly dreams I am back in my police uniform and reporting for duty. It seems rather odd to me as I left my career in law enforcement almost 10 years ago now. I wonder often about the lives I intersected with while wearing the blue and patrolling the streets of my town. This past week I was reminded after having dreamed again of being a first responder of one of my toughest days as a cop.

I had just started the graveyard shift and that night like many others at the time, I was the only cop on the shift. We were a small department and often had to cover this college town alone at this time in my career. I had recently come back the day before from reenlisting in the Army National Guard in response to 9/11 so my spirits were high as I began my patrol shift. As I was leaving the department at around 1030 p.m. or so I got the first call of the night. Dispatch came over the radio with a possible 10-34 at a certain location. Dispatch said that there was someone in the street screaming. I made my way with caution but speed wondering what I might find. As I approached the block of the disturbance, I did see someone in the street screaming, but I also saw smoke and as I looked to my left, large flames had begun engulfing a home. I parked and ran towards the fire. I could see a couple of people on the side of the home yelling in a window and I ran towards them. Upon reaching their location, I looked in the window and saw a man standing there nearly engulfed in flames and smoke. I instinctively grabbed a hold of his arm and pulled him through the window and drug him to safety but could hear him yelling at me. I have to save my daughters! I have to save my daughters! Then the cries were louder and directed towards me, SAVE MY DAUGHTERS OFFICER!! They are in there, I couldn't get to them, you should have left me in there!

Of course while all of this was going on, I had radioed dispatch to tell them Fire was needed and they had paged out our local volunteer fire department. I could hear the call going out and I had worked long enough beside these brave men and women to know that they would be there as fast as they could but I also knew it would take some time.

While I awaited the fire department to arrive I did everything I could to get into the home to save this man's daughters. I tried to jump back into the window that I had pulled him from, but the smoke from the fire was too significant and I couldn't even see the floor. I frantically pulled down some clothes from the neighbors close line and soaked them with a garden hose. I thought I may be able to cover my face with a wet shirt and jump back in the home to save the girls. I did this over and over for what seemed an eternity. But my body would not allow me to go further than the threshold of the window. I had been called to fight fire while in the national guard and had been in few precarious situations with timber fires but the smoke that was coming from this home was full of chemicals and substances that made breathing next to impossible and my line of sight was nonexistent.

The man I had pulled out of the window was again trying to get back in the house, I had to restrain him from doing so as I knew it was suicide to go back in and couldn't let him. As much as I knew even in this moment that I would as a father do everything I could to get back in that house. Sirens. Fire department is en route and will be there in just a minute as we were close to the firehouse.

They're here! I got the man and a couple of other people back to the rear alley as far away from the house as they would get with family inside and I started running out to the front yard to assist the fire department in controlling traffic and pedestrian on lookers and give them what information I had about the girls inside. As I ran towards the street, I looked to my left and saw a couple of fire fighters walking towards the fire with hoses in hand. Just before I shifted my gaze, and explosion occurred and knocked them back onto their back sides, I instinctively ducked and continued my run to the street. What I later found out was an oxygen tank on the porch of the house had exploded and as I ducked, flames shot out over my bald head and sucked back into the home.

As I gave the information to the fire department and resumed my "cop" job, I watched with anticipation and hopeful anxiousness as they worked to control the fire and rescuers broke down the doors and windows to find the girls inside. It seemed like forever and then all of the sudden, I watched as one of those firemen walked out holding a little girl in his arms, then a second one with a little girl smaller than the first. The were so blackened from smoke that I couldn't see anything else in the red lights coming from the trucks and ambulance on scene. The girls were rushed to the hospital and the family was taken there as well. I completed my duties on scene and raced to the hospital shortly afterward.

I advised dispatch to contact the Chief of police to have him notified that we have this situation and arrived at the hospital.

I watched with baited breath as the nurses and doctors did what they could in this little hospital on this cool September night in Nebraska. The smell of smoke filled the ER and there was a frantic feeling as everyone rushed from here to there doing everything they could for the little girls from the house on Lake Street. A flight for life was to be made available as they would take one of the girls to Denver to try and save her. One of them hadn't made it though. She had fell victim to the smoke, she was too little, only 8 years old. Her 10 year old sister was flown to Denver but didn't make it either.

I will never forget the solemn feeling on this toughest day. The tears from the firefighters and nurses and doctors were evident. I stood as a vigil as the father I had pulled from the home and the mother stood over the blacked hospital bed weeping over their daughter who didn't make it. I held back my tears, I had to, I was the police officer in this situation. The person who is to maintain their professionalism and bearing no matter the situation. You have to because everyone needs you to.

The Chief came in to check on me as things were getting wrapped up. He said, "Banz (my nickname) I know this is tough but I need you to stay on and finish your shift." He continued, "I would really like to let you take the rest of the night off, this ones's a tough one, but we don't have anyone else to cover tonight." I gave him the affirmative and left the hospital. I drove to my home which was actually just down the alley from the house that had just went up in flames and my wife met me at the door. I fell into her arms and wept. I went to my children's rooms, and grabbed them up. Looking at my son who was 10 and daughter who was 8 I vowed never to take for granted what can so easily be lost. I finished the shift but would forever be changed by this my toughest night.

I had long thought the man I pulled from the fire would hate me for keeping him from going back into the house to try and save his girls. This night haunted me for some time actually until one day I had a chance meeting. As I was helping with a local soup kitchen, a man came in to get a cup of soup. He looked at me and said, are you Officer Banzhaf? I said, well I used to be, why do you ask? He looked at me and said, do you remember that fire over on Lake Street a few years back? Of course I did. I answered him with a cautious yes, not knowing if this was a day of reckoning for what I had kept the father from doing. The man embraced me with a hug and said, "thank you Officer for saving my brother's life that night!" He went on to say, "because you saved him, he and his wife have had two little boys since and if you hadn't pulled him out of that window they wouldn't have had a dad to grow up with!"

Again, I wept that day, but it was a different type of tears, ones of redemption and peace.

So today if you happen to see a first responder, think on the things that they do and the things they carry around with them every day. All so that you and I can carry on our normal every day lives. Stop and thank them will you? Be to them what that man was to me that day at the soup kitchen. Everyone of them has their own toughest day that they carry.