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Firefighter answers his last alarm
Al Dennis looks for achange of pace after
more than 30 years on the job
BY PAT KIMBROUGH
ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER
HIGH POINT – For Al Dennis, a lot about his work has changed since
1972, when he started his job with the High Point Fire Department.
The rewards of being a firefighter,
however, have stayed constant.
“It was just the feeling that came
over me, being able to help somebody and seeing how much they
appreciated it,” he said. “It was that way with the first house fire I was
on, and it’s still that way today.” Dennis, who will retire next month,
currently is the fire department’s longest-serving employee, with more than
33 years on the job.
He’s battled fires on the top
floors of furniture showrooms and just about every other type of setting.
He’s also responded to countless traffic accidents and calls for medical
assistance.
Dennis, a fire equipment operator who
drives one of the department’s engines, has witnessed firsthand how
the fire department evolved into an agency that responds to far more than
fires.
Shortly after he started in the
1970s, firefighters began earning their EMT certifications and riding with
paramedics on calls.
“When I first started, the only
time they would call us out on a wreck was if there was a fluid spill,” he
recalled. “It doubled the number of calls we took when we started riding with
Guilford County EMS.”
One of the more memorable fires Dennis worked was a blaze that broke out in
a showroom in the National Furniture Mart building in 1977.
He recalled that it was a Sunday morning and that he had just
finished a 24 hour shift when he was called back to work.
“It was during the furniture market,
and it pretty much burned everything on the eighth floor up,” he said.
“There was no good way of fighting that fire. There was no way to vent (the
building) to let the heat and smoke out. We carried hoses up the stairwells
and hooked them to standpipes and fought it from two stairwe
lls.” Dennis recalled that nobody was injured in
the fire, which gutted two showrooms. He termed it “probably one of the
worst fires ever in High Point.”
Dennis, who lives in Sophia and turns 55 later this month, says he’s ready
for a slower pace. He’s got plans for some parttime
work, but will bid farewell to nights spent at the fire station.
“I can still physically do the
job fine,” he said. “I want to spend more time with my family. My wife has
never had me home every night since we’ve been married.”
pkimbrough@hpe.com |888-3531
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