Beyond the ranks: A look inside the Hinsdale Fire Department

They don’t possess any superpowers, nor do they keep their identities a secret, yet they are the faceless heroes who sacrifice themselves for total strangers every day.

“There’s probably a perception out there that the firemen sit around in their chairs and wait for calls to come, but that’s not the case for this department,” said 40-year-old Steve Tullis of La Grange Park, who’s been with the department for eight years. “We’re always thinking of what-if and worst-case scenarios.”

Of the three firemen interviewed for this story, two factors stood out: How much they cared about one another and how acclimated they were to a laborious job with spontaneous danger.

“At the Hinsdale Fire Department, we like to call it a firehouse because it’s a really family-oriented department,” Tullis said. “Staying motivated really isn’t a challenge for us because we are driven, ambitious and always seeking out new opportunities to improve.”

At the local firehouse, firefighters work 24 hours on and 48 hours off — a schedule that can take a physical and emotional toll on them.

Tom McCarthy, 30, of Westchester has been with the department for eight years and stressed that being a fireman takes versatility. One minute could be a fire and the next a cardiac arrest, so the job requires quick thinking in emergency situations, which can be difficult as days get longer.

“There are days when you’re completely spent,” McCarthy said. “I think it’s demanding and at times the hardest part is being away from your family. I don’t have any children, but my wife and I are expecting our first in January so I know it’s only going to be more difficult for me to be away for 24 hours at a time, but I’ve talked to many people in town and so many folks have to travel for their jobs so in a way I think they can relate to the way we have to be away from our loved ones for hours at a time.”

A member of the Hinsdale Fire Department since 1991, Mike Karban also knows the feeling of being away from loved ones. But it’s the family bond the firefighters have that helps during the tough times.

“It is disheartening when you’re not there for the kids’ birthday parties when they were smaller, but you try and help each other out,” said Karban, 49, of Burr Ridge. “If it’s Christmas morning and you can hang in for a guy who has younger kids, you make it work.”

Along with being away from family, firefighters have a constant shadow of new dangers lingering with every siren. Staging different scenarios is way for them to practice emergencies, which they recently did in a training drill in Hinsdale, where firefighters learned what it was like to rescue one of their own.

“You can only have so many make-believe scenarios in the fire station,” McCarthy said. “When you can go to an actual structure in your town and practice on a live building, I think that is irreplaceable for firefighters.”

For McCarthy, experience is invaluable to a firefighter — something he learned immediately while recalling his closest call on the job, which was his first day.

After responding to an abandoned house fire in Western Springs, McCarthy and his team, led by a more experienced officer, entered the home. McCarthy said the officer was able to determine the fire was in the void space between the floor and the ceiling of the basement and had everyone exit to fight the fire from the exterior.

McCarthy didn’t realize until later how lucky he was.

“When the fire was extinguished and the smoke had cleared, there was a massive hole in the floor,” he said. “In that situation, had we crawled in or gotten a little far from the wall, someone could’ve fallen into that hole and into the basement. Looking back I realized he really saved me.”

In Karban’s years with Hinsdale and other departments, there is little he hasn’t seen.

“There was an abandoned building and there was a report of a structure fire,” Karban said, recalling a dangerous shift similar to McCarthy’s at another firehouse. “The guy in front of me went down through the hole to the basement and I was literally hanging on to the edge of the hole myself.”

Of course there’s danger, but sometimes it’s the little things that remind the Hinsdale firefighters why they put up with the days of battling blazing fires down to rescuing cats stuck in walls.

McCarthy never planned on being a firefighter, but his father had been one in Hinsdale until two years ago when he retired. When McCarthy did join the department, he only got to work with his dad once, but it happened to be on Father’s Day when a call came in for a fire in a neighboring district.

“I remember driving the truck and he was riding in front and I remember just thinking to myself, ‘Go figure, it’s Father’s Day,’ so that’s a memory I’ll always cherish,” he said. “He was very well-respected in the department and very well-liked. Not only was I proud to be his son, but now I really felt fortunate to go to a fire with him.”

On one hand, being a firefighter can be seen as a job that puts a person’s physical and mental strengths to the test, but these men and women rely on each other and risk their lives to save others without thinking twice.

This is their norm.

“Don’t sweat the small stuff and look at the bigger picture to know what is really important,” Karban advised. “We’re all a team that has to work together. There’s going to be personality conflicts and stuff like that, but if you can get past that small stuff and look at what’s really important, then that’s how we gel.”