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Yahoo
21-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
NH Heroes honored: Manchester fire chief 'couldn't be prouder'
Manchester Fire Department Battalion Chief Jon Fosher is ready to put his life on the line at a moment's notice to help people in need. All in a day's work for a first responder in the state's largest city. Ask him to stand on stage and be honored for his actions, that's when the nerves kick in. 'It seems like these things are more uncomfortable for us than actually doing the work, you know?' Fosher said. 'I mean, that's where we're most comfortable, doing the job, but we understand and appreciate the acknowledgement.' Fosher was among 11 people honored with New Hampshire Hero Awards during a morning ceremony Wednesday at the Rex Theatre in Manchester. The program is sponsored by Citizens and presented by the New Hampshire Union Leader. The awards honor New Hampshire residents who have risked their lives to save or attempt to save the life of another person. On Wednesday, Fosher, Safety Officer Kevin Grebinar and Swiftwater Rescue Team members Capt. Adam Iverson, Lt. Tom Defina and Rescue 1 firefighters James Langley, Adam Langlois, Tyler Gaudette, Craig Robichaud, Bob McKechnie and Jason Coulter were honored as New Hampshire Heroes of 2024, along with Navy Seaman Recruit Brady Procon. Fosher and his fellow Manchester firefighters are members of a Swiftwater Rescue Team dispatched to Boone, North Carolina, during Hurricane Helene last September. Procon jumped from a jet ski onto a rogue boat to stop it from spinning in circles and endangering those nearby in Smith's Cove on Lake Winnipesaukee last July 4 weekend, after the boat's captain fell into the water during a sailing lesson. Procon was 17 at the time. 'New Hampshire is always there to help, and you all have exemplified that through your actions and your deeds,' said Joyce Levesque, executive vice president of the New Hampshire Union Leader. 'I thank you personally for what you've done for the state. To get an award, you have to be a New Hampshire individual who has risked their life to save someone else, or put someone else's life ahead of your own. It's a very selfless act that you all do for us, and we're so thrilled to have you here.' Marc Lubelczyk, the new president of Citizens in New Hampshire and Vermont, said he's read "Hero" stories in the Union Leader for years. 'I'm always inspired by the stories, the bravery and the acts of kindness exhibited by the honorees,' Lubelczyk said. 'They really do embody what's great about New Hampshire. The courage that today's awardees exemplify serves as a powerful reminder to all of us of the goodness, the hopefulness and the sense of community that remains strong here in New Hampshire. We salute each of you for your selflessness, your courage and your dedication to helping others.' When members of the Swiftwater Rescue Team arrived in North Carolina, they were met with hurricane conditions, landslides and mudslides, trapping residents in homes and vehicles. Two Manchester rescue team members swam through 6 feet of water in the halls of an evacuated National Guard Armory to locate a woman trapped inside, unsure if she was still alive. Manchester Fire Chief Ryan Cashin said he 'couldn't be prouder' of the team for the work that they did. 'The training that they put in on a yearly basis is amazing,' Cashin said. 'And the work, the dedication to the craft, to be deployed down there. They weren't just doing swiftwater rescues at this point. They had to do high-angle rescues, rope rescues. They were doing search and rescues of entire houses, because they were basically the first rescue team that was on site in that area. 'So to be able to adapt, overcome, lead, and manage through several days of very rigorous rescues and long hours, I couldn't be prouder.' Fosher said of the 10 members of the team, eight have small children at home. 'Everybody's doing their part, the spouses step up and everyone shares the workload, but it's a lot,' Fosher said. 'The award, it's not just the acknowledgement to us, it's to the families that support us.'
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
NH Heroes: Manchester firefighters were rescuers in storm-ravaged N.C.
When the Swiftwater Rescue Team from the Manchester Fire Department arrived in Boone, North Carolina, during Hurricane Helene last September, they knew their skills would be tested. Nothing in the Merrimack River or in floods they had dealt with in New Hampshire or Vermont prepared them for the enormity of what they encountered. Heroes Award logo NH Heroes: Brady Procon stopped a runaway boat from plowing into sailing students Navy Seaman Recruit Brady Procon was 17 last July 4 weekend, when a crisis erupted in a quiet cove of Lake Winnipesaukee. Rapidly changing hurricane conditions. High winds and pounding rain. Racing water in swollen or overflowed creeks and rivers. Landslides and mudslides that dislodged and crushed houses. Flooding that submerged parking lots in 20 minutes and inundated the first floors of commercial buildings. Fire trucks stranded in water. They had driven 18 hours to get there on the morning of Friday, Sept. 25, with their two rescue boats. The parking lot behind the Boone firehouse had become a river. Trees, dumpsters, parts of demolished cars sped by in an overflowing creek, piling under a bridge and popping the span four to five feet in the air. Two Manchester rescue team members swam through 6 feet of water in the halls of an evacuated National Guard Armory to locate a woman trapped inside, not knowing whether she was still alive. They lifted up each floating backpack to see if she was holding on or submerged. 'I've never experienced anything to this magnitude,' said Battalion Chief Jon Fosher. 'What was normally a babbling brook, a lazy creek, turned into a roaring river. You could hear boulders moving by.' 'Once they showed up, the storm switched so fast. I'm proud of the members' ability to adapt on the fly and manage a very high-risk situation without having any understanding of the area or region they were in,' said Manchester Fire Chief Ryan Cashin. 'It comes down to the training they do throughout the year, and their dedication to their craft on a daily basis. They consistently try to make themselves better and I couldn't be prouder.' The team members paid for swift water training and did it in their off hours. 'I'd put our guys up against any other fire department in the country,' Cashin said. New Hampshire Heroes On Wednesday, Fosher, Safety Officer Kevin Grebinar and Swiftwater Rescue Team members Capt. Adam Iverson, Lt. Tom Defina and Rescue 1 firefighters James Langley, Adam Langlois, Tyler Gaudette, Craig Robichaud, Bob McKechnie and Jason Coulter will be honored as New Hampshire Heroes by the Union Leader. The Manchester crew expected to spend a week in North Carolina and stayed 12 days. Some of the men were disappointed to leave. 'These were people whose whole town and communities were wiped out and they went our of their way to feed us, do our laundry and give us a sendoff with a bluegrass band,' said Iverson. 'It was a humbling time,' said Coulter. 'We train all the time on our skills, oftentimes with ourselves. When you put real people into the event, it's as realistic as it can be. When it's a real event, it's humbling to do it and have a good outcome.' Their work involved 'the most technical things we've done in my career,' said Defina, who has been with the Manchester department for 26 years and also serves on a federal search and rescue team in Massachusetts. At one point, firefighter Langley leaned against a tree and looked up to see the high-water mark well above his head. 'You could look up and see the water line 30 feet up in the trees,' said Defina. 'I saw a reclining chair sitting on a tree limb.' 'The first 24 to 36 hours,' when the storm hit Boone, a town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, 'probably most shocking was (how) it picked and chose which neighborhoods it hit,' Gaudette said. 'Some parts of town were totally gone, with nothing left but the foundations.' 'Just the amount of water coming down and the level of destruction,' said Langley. 'Cars turned into a small portion of what they used to be. The water erased everything that used to be.' A toppled tree lying across the uphill side of a house saved the mother, daughter and dog inside. Sliding mud had 'caved in the 80-year-old mother's second-floor bedroom. She had to crawl across a mud-filled, caved-in room to get out,' said Robichaud. 'If that tree didn't land horizontally across the back, the mud would have overtaken the house and it would have been a different outcome.' The rescue team rigged a high line to transport the women and their dog down the wreckage-strewn mountainside, amid trees piled like matchsticks and the remains of homes. When the team entered Boone, the parking lot behind the Boone Fire Department had filled with five feet of water. Defina had to hold onto the roofline in order to rescue the woman stranded in the National Guard Armory from a window and bring her inside his team's rescue boat. 'We could stand up in our boat and get onto the roof of the building.' 'Swift water is the most dangerous thing we have to do,' said Defina. 'When you're dealing with water, you're dealing with a force you can't imagine.' 'At some points the boat would have been outpowered by the water,' said Robichaud. The nearly opaque water hid hazardous materials such as auto parts and oil tanks. Military helicopters evacuated people who otherwise could not be reached. Second call to help This was the second time the City of Manchester answered a call for help in North Carolina through the federal Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) system. The first time was in 2018, during Hurricane Florence in the state's eastern half. But that paled in comparison to what they saw last September in western North Carolina. 'The damage (in 2018) was nothing like I saw here,' said Defina. 'I've never seen the damage I saw here, all because of the mountains' and the water pouring down them. They worked in other towns around the region, including Marion and Green Valley. On Oct. 5 they returned to Manchester. 'Manchester is fortunate because we have a really well-trained rescue company,' Fosher said. Rescue teams respond when a governor declares a state of emergency and contacts the federal government and other states for help. 'We're lucky we had highly trained individuals who knew what to do. Everyone worked together to do what needed to be done,' said McKechnie. 'We started our mornings by 4:30 every day,' commuting to where they were needed, 90 to 120 minutes each way, Iverson said. 'Places you'd think you could get to were flooded out themselves.' 'The ultimate thing for our department is to be able to respond to more of those EMAC requests,' said Defina, who also belongs to Massachusetts Task One Urban Search and Rescue, one of 28 teams nationwide developed to respond to earthquakes. 'Now it's mostly swift water with the amount of hurricanes.' rbaker@
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
NH Heroes: Brady Procon stopped a runaway boat from plowing into sailing students
Navy Seaman Recruit Brady Procon was 17 last July 4 weekend, when a crisis erupted in a quiet cove of Lake Winnipesaukee. On Wednesday, the New Hampshire Union Leader will honor him as a New Hampshire Hero of 2024. Hero Awards logo NH Heroes: Manchester firefighters were rescuers in storm-ravaged N.C. When the Swiftwater Rescue Team from the Manchester Fire Department arrived in Boone, North Carolina, during Hurricane Helene last September, they knew their skills would be tested. Procon and friends were cooking hot dogs and hamburgers, talking and laughing on a Saturday afternoon when a loud motor boat roared into peaceful Smith Cove in Gilford, where his father, Jeremy Procon, owns vacation property. 'We heard the sound of a roaring boat engine, which was super out of place because it's a no-wake zone. There usually isn't any loud noise or chaos,' Procon said Monday by phone from Navy boot camp. He saw an out-of-control boat with no one aboard — 'a danger to everyone who was around the water.' People were screaming. 'It unfolded before my eyes. My dad said, 'There's nobody on that boat.'' The operator of a sailing school motor boat had fallen out of the boat, which was careening toward sailing students in their sailboats. Procon's father jumped in his own boat to get kids out of the water. Procon climbed aboard a neighbor's personal watercraft. The neighbor drove his craft as close to the boat as he could get, Procon said, but someone had to jump onto the boat, which he estimates was going 15 to 20 mph. 'He looked at me like I was crazy. We circled once, then got close and I jumped on.' His ribs struck the center console. 'I grabbled the steering and turned the throttle way down' to get it away from the dock and the youngsters sailing. 'When I got it, I was shaking. People were clapping a lot. My ribs hurt. I hit that boat pretty hard,' Procon said. 'My friends at the dock said, 'What did you just do?' 'I don't even know,' I said.' 'It was just so random, out of the blue, just another Saturday. The summer before was the first time I drove a jet ski,' he said. 'At first, it was tunnel vision. I saw that boat and wanted to stop it.' Procon, an avid dirt bike rider and power sports fan, said his goal in the Navy is 'to find a good career for myself. I've always loved the military and the Navy. The movie 'Top Gun.' The discipline and the traditional aspect. The uniform looks good. So far, it's the people. The people in the Navy are awesome. I've met some friends for life.' 'Brady's a pretty courageous kid, pretty athletic as well,' said his father, Jeremy. 'There had to be 15 little sailboats out there that day. We ran out to get the kids out of the situation.' It was Brady's idea to stop the motorboat, his father said. 'He's always the first to jump off a boat, the first to jump in the river, the first to do a back flip. He's a go-getter. He lives life on the edge.' 'In hindsight, I would have just cleared the people out of the way. He was focused on stopping the boat itself.' rbaker@
