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The Night John Alston Jr. Will Never Forget

Paul Bass Photo

The woman ran outside. Her twins were still inside, amid the flames.

John Alston Jr. headed inside hoping to save them.

It was late at night; the year was 1992, in Jersey City. Alston and his fellow firefighters were responding to a blaze inside a three-story, six-family building on Dwight Street, in that city. The fire had started inside the apartment of the mom who was holding the hands of two children and was now imploring Alston and company to rescue her other two children, six-month-old twins.

Alston had always wanted this job. He always wanted to save lives. Since he was 4 years old, catching rides on Jersey City fire trucks.

He learned that night in 1992 some new lessons about his dream profession, painful lessons that he is applying, 37 years later, as New Haven’s fire chief, a post he has held for two years after a 31-year career in Jersey City.

It was a night Alston will never forget.

In The Room”

Which room?” Alston wondered as the crew battled the smoke filling the apartment.

They assumed the bedroom, where the fire had started.

We were thinking we could make the grab,” Alston recalled recently during an interview on WNHH FM’s Dateline New Haven” program. Even though conditions weren’t too favorable, there was enough light, believe it or not, from the fire to see what we were doing.”

They didn’t have a hose line with them — which is one of the most dangerous times you can search a room.” They pressed forward into the bedroom, found the crib, searched it. There were dolls inside — thank God.” No children.

The firefighters returned outside to speak to the mother.

They’re in there! They’re in there!” she insisted.

Where? In the room!” she said. She repeated: In the room.” She didn’t specify which room.

So the firefighters went back in. They searched again, this time in the living room. Unable to see, Alston felt his way around, came upon a couch.

Fires are not like television,” Alston observed. What we actually do is [often] in the dark.”

He continued blindly feeling around. And came upon two heads. He knew instantly” that he had found the kids.

We grabbed a flashlight. We saw where they were.

As a father, as a firefighter I wanted to pick them up. But knew I couldn’t.

At this point now the medical examiner would have to come in.” The firefighters had arrived too late. Could they ever have arrived in time in the first place?

That would be one of those questions for which Alston would never have an answer. It would haunt him.

Captain Steps In

Thomas Breen Photo

Fire Chief John Alston Jr.

The fire captain on scene, John Ruddy, knew Alston and his colleagues had just experienced a traumatic scene.

He grabbed Alston and a colleague who had also been at the couch.

Come with me,” Ruddy said. Are you guys OK?”

He talked right then about the details of what the pair had just gone through.

There’s not much you could have done,” Alston remembered Ruddy telling them.

You’re going to feel bad. This is something that will affect you. If you want to talk about it, we can talk about it. You just experienced something horrible.

If you don’t feel something, I’m concerned.”

After his shift that night, Alston crawled into the bed of his 2‑year-old son. And he cried.

Capt. Ruddy’s actions at the scene were unusual back in those days, or at least not official protocol, Alston said. Fire departments didn’t require formal critical incident stress debriefings” the way they do now.

You know what we used to do,” Alston said, referring in general to people in the profession. We used to drink. We would tell off-color jokes as a way of defusing it. We did a lot of coping mechanisms, self-defense mechanisms to try to get through the day.

Many firefighters ended up getting divorced. Because we didn’t handle our issues in the proper way. We didn’t know.”

Looking back, Alston appreciates that Capt. Ruddy knew what to do. Ruddy repeated the process after a subsequent call in which a child’s leg was mangled after a car hit him.

When terrorists hit the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, Alston was among the many regional firefighters who helped out at the scene. He survived the experience. A number of his fellow firefighters did not. For years Alston felt survivor’s guilt.” To this day, he keeps a collection of miniature toy fire trucks on his desk — one for each colleague who died on duty that day.

Bringing Lessons Home

Paul Bass Photo

Daily trauma: Firefighters responding to an overdose victim on Elm Street.

Alston learned some specific hands-on lessons that night on Jersey City’s Dwight Street.

One lesson: Don’t always assume that you’re going to find people in the bedroom, no matter what age.”

Another lesson: Making sure that when you talk to people, getting as much information as possible. Where were you? Where was the last place that you saw them?’ Be very careful when speaking to someone about their last act.”

Alston will never know if that would have made a difference in this one fire. When firefighters do everything right, they still sometimes are not able to save people’s lives. They need to be able to deal with that fact.

That’s perhaps the bigger lesson Alston took from the night he’ll never forget.

As a cascade of K2 overdoses unfolded last August on the Green, for instance, Alston and Assistant Chief Mark Vendetto, concerned about compassion fatigue,” decided to rotate six firefighters off OD duty after they’d responded to six cases within the first two and a half hours of their shifts. Assistant Fire Chief Orlando Marcano checked in at firehouses to monitor how firefighters were coping with the stress.

Alston said he tries personally to visit a firehouse after firefighters have returned from a traumatic incident. Like Ruddy, he urges the firefighters to try to talk about what they’ve experienced, to accept that it will affect them. He tells them he, too, has experienced emotional fires like the one in 1992 that haunted him for years after.

He urges them to make use of the department’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP). That is often a tough lift for fire and police supervisors because of the professions’ traditionally macho cultures. But it’s crucial, Alston argued.

The New Haven department has set up a protocol with its EAP, Behavioral Health Consultants. Supervisors have a list that lets them know what kind of incidents automatically trigger a call to the company to send counselors on site to help the firefighters. With other incidents, supervisors call in to report what happened, then receive advice about whether to call in counselors or else just monitor how firefighters react in subsequent days.

In addition, Alston said, he has had firefighters trained in peer-to-peer counseling so they can help each other.

There’s something about the way we’re wired as human beings,” Alston reflected. Talking about things, traditionally, [is hard in] a male-driven occupation. The image of the firefighter being rugged and tough — we would not ask for help. That culture had to change.”

Click on the above video for the full interview with Fire Chief John Alston Jr. on WNHH FM’s Dateline New Haven.”

Previous stories in this series:

The Day Frank Ricci Will Never Forget
The Day Gary Merwede Will Never Forget

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