By LEIGH HORNBECK, Staff writer
First published: Monday, December 29, 2003
Albany Times Union

Ronnie Myers used to worry that rushing to a fire, not the fire itself, would injure her firefighter husband and sons.

At one time, she said, seven young men in houses within sight of her front door responded to alarms, and she was afraid there would be a car accident.

Then came the New Year's Day fire in 1997 that took the life of her husband, Brian Myers Sr.

Myers was working a hose alongside his oldest son, Brian Myers Jr., at Prospector's Bar and Grill. The flames were visible through the trees at the Myers home, and Ronnie Myers walked through the woods to watch. When she arrived, she wondered why the Schuyler Hose Company guys were off to the side instead of fighting the fire.

As it became clear something was wrong, she was told, "Brian is hurt."

At first, she didn't know which Brian they meant.

Brian Myers Jr. wanted to be a firefighter from the time he was a child. He was the first in the family to sign up for the Schuyler Hose Company, when he was in high school.

Myers Sr., a superintendent at a Hollingsworth and Vose mill in Greenwich, needed nudging.

"He was turning into a couch potato," Ronnie Myers said. "I think Brian and I filled out the application for him."

A Christmas Day fire that gutted the Myers home in 1988 was the catalyst. Myers wished there were more he could do to save the house, Ronnie Myers said.

When Myers Sr. joined, the firefighters called him "Senior" to differentiate him from his son. Soon he was at the firehouse every spare moment, polishing chrome and telling stories.

He joined a quiet brotherhood of volunteer firefighters found at rural parties, picnics and town meetings, breaking off midsentence when familiar tones sound from outsize pagers at their hips.

"My first call was for a smell of gas, and I was pumped. I still get pumped," said Myers Jr., 32, now the first assistant chief.

For volunteers, fighting fires, training at the local firehouse, holding fund-raisers to buy equipment and washing and waxing firetrucks is a way of life. The duties go on without pay after their regular workdays end.

Saratoga County has roughly 2,200 active volunteers, members of 34 fire departments. Statewide, there are nearly 80,000 volunteer firefighters, according to the state Office of Fire Prevention and Control.

Volunteer firefighters are a close fraternity, including some women on active duty.

Sometimes, the work is too consuming. Doug Lake, secretary of the Rock City Falls Fire Department, admitted with regret that dedication at the firehouse can lead to family trouble -- in his case, the end of two marriages.

Having seen similar problems, Chief Rick Drew imposes strict rules on the 35 active firefighters at Schuyler Hose Company.

"It takes a lot out of you," he said. "Family is your first priority, then your job, then the Fire Department."

Some share the experience with their families. Father-son volunteers are common, as are multiple siblings in a department. Bob Palmieri, 45, followed his father into W.L. Howland Chemical Engine Company, No. 5, part of the Mechanicville Fire Department, in 1976, when he was 18.

In January, Palmieri will be sworn in as chief with his father -- also Bob -- at his side, and there may be a third generation of Palmieri firemen.

"My son Daniel will definitely be a firefighter when he grows up," Palmieri said of his 12-year-old.

Many volunteers join from a sense of responsibility to their communities.

"If it's 2 o'clock in the morning and 30-below, and you have a chimney fire, you expect us to be there," said Shane Mahar, 22, first assistant chief of the Newland-Wood Fire Company in Stillwater.

Firefighter Sandra Reulet joined Schuyler Hose out of a sense of community activism.

"I truly believe that the general public has no idea just how much the volunteer departments and their members give to their communities," Reulet said.

"It's not even just responding to the fire calls and keeping up with the training drills. Many of our guys go down to the firehouse every weekend to work on the trucks themselves, which saves the company a great deal of money that can then be spent on equipment or gear," Reulet said.

For many firefighters, volunteering is enough.

"I never wanted to take it further; I have the best of both worlds," said Mahar, who is an assignment editor at WRGB Ch. 6.

Not so for Justin Young. At 17, he has yet to fight a fire inside a burning building. According to state law, he is not allowed inside until he turns 18 in April. A senior at Schuylerville High School, he wears his fire pager in class and has permission to leave for alarms. Other students think he does it to get out of school, Young said.

When he graduates from college, his dream is to be a New York City firefighter.

"It's tough, but I think I have the stuff to do it," he said.

The deaths of so many New York City firefighters on 9/11 raised the profile of all firefighters and improved the public perception of volunteers, Mahar said.

"There was a time when people thought the firehouse was a place guys went to drink," he said. "That's always been a myth, but now we have better technology, more involvement with the community."

As deputy director of the Saratoga County Emergency Services Department, Ed Tremblay oversees the county volunteers. He was at the fire that killed Brian Myers Sr. Tremblay has spent 25 years as a volunteer firefighter with the West Crescent Fire Department, and that fire is one of two that stand out in his mind. The other, which happened the same month, killed three children in Halfmoon.

Dealing with the aftermath is hard for firefighters, Tremblay said. Departments hold stress debriefings after fatal fires, he said, and psychologists meet with them.

"You rely on peer support; you have to tell yourself you did all you could do, and you can't let it affect your ability to do your job," said Tremblay.

Myers Jr. was elected chief in 1998 and served for four years. He designs and often runs company training classes. A heightened concern for safety tempers the daredevil that Ronnie Myers said her son was growing up.

Still, he cannot put to rest the questions he thinks of every day.

What if he had been standing where his father stood that night as Prospector's burned? What if he hadn't chosen that moment to go outside for more tools just as "all hell broke loose?" In the seconds it took to walk to the door, fire overwhelmed his father and firefighters Mark Wells and Tom Temple. Senior was trapped. Myers Jr. went back in for his father, dragging him to a window where other men from Schuyler Hose helped pull him out.

Senior suffered burns on 70 percent of his body and was pronounced dead at Saratoga Hospital. He was 47.

Ronnie Myers said the family doesn't talk about the fire at Prospector's much.

Her son said he doesn't discuss it at the firehouse. But the memory is there, every day. The restaurant's chimney still stands on Route 29. Myers said he can see it from his house on Chestnut Street when the leaves are off the trees.

The day after Myers Sr.'s death, as grieving friends and relatives streamed through the family house, the fire whistle sounded. Myers didn't jump for the door -- the company was off-line, and another department responded to the alarm -- but he said he knew, even then, that he would go back inside a burning building.