"It's been an amazing career. I wouldn't change a thing. I've loved every minute of it."

Gordon Orth - Deputy Chief at CES (Central Emergency Services) – is retiring after 28 years of service to the Borough. Deputy Chief Orth began his work with the Borough in 1985 with the assessing department (underneath that emergency services exterior lurks a degree in civil drafting). Realizing that sitting behind a desk was not his nature, Gordon shifted to working with the maintenance department. Throughout his five years working with these two departments, Gordon volunteered as a firefighter in Sterling. When a firefighting position opened up at the K-Beach Station in 1990, Gordon jumped at the opportunity, and has dedicated himself to emergency services ever since. 

 

As a youth in Cordova, Gordon was drawn to the exhilaration of firefighting. He lived across the street from the Cordova Fire Station, and when the civil air siren would sound the alarm for a fire call, he would jump on his bike and follow the engines. He calls himself an "engine chaser," and knew then that this was his passion.

As Gordon looks to his retirement date of April 30, 2013, he is aware that in this transition he is feeling the impending loss of his "second family," the community of the firehouse, which has been an integral part of his life for over twenty years.

Gordon is heading to a second career, working on the Slope, doing building and grounds maintenance for Kuukpik, a contractor with ConocoPhillips. He'll be signing onto the spill response team and the fire department up there, as well as continuing to volunteer with CES during his weeks off at home.

It is difficult to imagine a CES without Gordon Orth; emergency services have grown up with him and through him. His service has impacted this community in many ways – in the individuals whose lives he has saved, in his relationships with fellow firefighters, and in his leadership and mentorship of the growing CES family.

We offer a deeply felt "thank you" to Deputy Chief Orth for his commitment to the Borough, and hope that he knows that he is recognized as having contributed great good to our community.

M – "Can you share some of the meaningful experiences that define this career at CES for you?"

G – "It's difficult to do, because I know there are people in the community that are tied to a lot of these calls.

I remember going out on a call in Sterling, the very first call I ever went on. I had just signed up as a volunteer, and had just finished EMT class, and the very first call I ever went on were two little girls that had been hit by a car out on the Sterling highway. I was lost in that call. There were paramedics, and it was a huge eye-opener, just seeing the proficiency of the people working as paramedics at the department at the time. It solidified me truly wanting to do this.

I've been on cardiac arrests where we've brought them back, and they lived for years in the community. I've been on a lot of big fires in the area – Beemun's when it burned and Peninsula Center Mall – and seeing that we had a good department here, that did amazing stops on those calls, and that the buildings were able to be rebuilt, or fixed back up, and still generate income for the community with shops and businesses.

The Photo Express fire over on the Spur Highway – it was a defensive fire, because it was really burning when we got there. I was putting water in one window, and one of the other firefighters was putting water in the other window, and the wind changed and blew smoke out, and that ended his career. He took a big breath of air and he ended up with a lot of significant lung damage and injury from that fire. I've thought about that many times...that could have been me. It could have been my window it came out of, as opposed to his. Those types of things – you think about that a lot in your life, when you're dealing with this kind of a career you deal with tragedy every day. So in our minds – I don't want to say you think about it more than the normal person, but you're just exposed to it..."

M – "...and you do think about it more than normal. Human beings – issues of death and injury and loss – we push them away. We're in denial about them. I think most people are not walking around thinking "this could be the day that I go." But that's true every day; that can happen to you at any time."

G – "Absolutely."

M – "If you're in an emergency response profession it's in your face all the time – the frailty of human beings, and how fast things can change. So I do think it's different."

G –"I owe my life to people here in this building. Some of them are retired or gone now, but I was on a fire south of town one time, and we had gone in on an interior attack, pulling hose and spraying water and putting the fire out as we went, and the floor started to get real soft underneath us. We made a very hasty retreat out of that building. I was on the nozzle and Roy Browning was right behind me, and he got to the window and stood up to go out of the window, and the floor collapsed underneath us, into the basement. I had one hand on the windowsill. The captain – Jim Dunn – and Roy grabbed my hands and lifted me up out of that building; otherwise, I would not have been in good shape. So I owe my life to people here, from different calls, and that is very humbling. But, then again, that's what we do.

Everybody here is family. We look out for each other and we take care of each other and it's amazing. That's what I'm gonna miss. That's what you go away from when you retire."

M – "If you were going to advise someone who was thinking about doing this as a career, what wisdom would you share?"

G – "This career...I don't think just anybody can do it. It's got to be something that's in you, that's a part of you. That desire to help people. That's just the person. You can't teach that.

Fighting fire – as bad as it sounds – that's the fun part of the job. For the adrenaline junkie. All of the stuff that I do, that's part of being an adrenaline junkie. You hear the tones go off and your heart rate goes up and your blood pressure goes up, and you're excited to go do something. But it's always at somebody's expense. That's the horrible thing. That side of it is the adrenaline side of it.

The other part of it, the medical side of it – it's got to be part of the person's make up. Dealing with family and tragedy and people that are hurt. That's just the DNA of somebody - to be able to do that and to be able to continue to do that.

After 28 years, I know I'll always use my medical background. I've talked to several people who have retired, and they've said to me, "I've hit the wall." There's a point where you've seen enough and done enough. In this career, you think you can fix everything and there's some things you can't fix. And you live with that all the time.

Over the years, we've had people – they've gone on horrible calls – and they come back here and they go, "I'm done. I'm not doing this." Everybody out there now, they do the job and they go home and crack the bedroom door and are thankful that their kids are in there sleeping.

What I would tell somebody? This is probably the most rewarding career that I could ever imagine. At the end of the day, you can go home and say, "That person wouldn't be here if we hadn't gone out."

I've been to some big fires before, and one of our jobs is to protect the public and save structures, but I've gotten ten feet inside and found photo albums, and you grab those and throw them outside real quick, and you find jewelry cases and that kind of stuff, and I remember many times carrying that stuff out and have someone say, "my great-grandmother's wedding ring is in that box." There are things you save in some of these fires that are truly irreplaceable – pictures of their little kids – and to have that be so meaningful to somebody, even though they just lost their house, you've brought something out that they say, "thank you so much for giving me that."

M – "If you could leave the Borough itself some wisdom, in terms of something you hope could remain or change after you leave – in Emergency Services – what would be your advice?"

G – "When I joined this department, it was this station in Soldotna and they were renting a building in Sterling to put a tanker and an engine in. In the time that I've been here, I've seen our call volume go from 300 calls to 2300 calls a year. We built Sterling station, and added equipment, and built K-Beach and Funny River and Kasilof stations, Mackey Lake, and now these two fill sites where we're putting apparatus.

The community is growing and we're trying desperately to keep up with that, to keep a consistent and equitable response throughout a growing district. And we've got single employee, one-person stations out there...

When I started, I was out in Sterling, by myself, as an engineer. I responded to fire calls and I responded to kids not breathing, and responded to car wrecks with people trapped.

I was by myself, at station 3, on Thanksgiving Day, and I got a call-out for an accident with multiple injuries and entrapment. It was a block and a half from the fire station. I got in the ambulance and pulled out, and I get there and there's a car rolled over on its roof, with legs sticking out from underneath it, and another guy that had crawled out of that car, two people in a van were severely injured. I had to triage. Everybody was breathing except the guy under the car. There was a kid there with a pick-up. I asked him if he had a tow-strap and we hooked it up to the bottom of the car; he pulled it out far enough for me to get this guy rolled out from underneath the car. Not breathing and no pulse, so, one minute of CPR, trying to get something back...nothing.

I turn around, and had to walk away from that guy that wasn't breathing, knowing I had other people who were bleeding and very severely injured, and – last minute – I stopped and told the kid, "grab a blanket from the ambulance, cover him up and stay with him." Then I went to treat this other guy. Seems like forever, but it was probably 45 seconds, the kid hollers over at me - "he took a breath". Understanding the body, if you smash the body, and push all the air out of the lungs, push all the blood out of the heart, the brain's still working and it takes a minute for that to all re-prime, and so I grabbed other bystanders that were there and said, "Bandage that. Cover this. Stop that bleeding. Keep his head still." One was critically injured, and the others were walking wounded. I went back and started working on this guy. The ambulance from town showed up with the "cavalry".

You're out there by yourself, responding to these calls. If you're lucky, on-calls or off-duty people will show up to help, but the "cavalry" always comes from here [Station 1]. At the time there were three people working at this station, so they all showed up. Jim Dunn, the Captain who pulled me out of that one fire, was on duty, and he and I treated this guy all the way back to town. He got medevac'd to Anchorage. Then you go to another call, you go to another tragedy, and so, you do these things and they're there for a fleeting moment and then they're gone and you're on to another tragedy. Somebody else's life.

I just happened to be sitting at the fire station one night, and the doorbell rings, and I walked downstairs, and there's this guy standing there with a walker and with his wife. He says, "I was in a car wreck here, and I just wanted to come by and say thank you and find out who was there. " We talked for about an hour.

That's one of those ones where you go home and say, "I made a difference."

About three years later, I was playing golf in Kenai with my brother, and we catch up to the group in front of us, and there's two gentlemen and they offer to play together as a foursome. Two holes later, the guy says, "you look so familiar." I tell him that I work for the fire department in Soldotna, he says, "remember that car wreck in Sterling? That was me."

It's rare that you really catch where they go, the end of the story. But that one – to me – that's one that I'm able to sit back and smile and...it worked.

But it's damn lucky that it worked, because that's a hard thing to do when you're by yourself. The first day we staffed Funny River Road, we had a respiratory arrest call and the guy who was working out there alone – Scott Van Zant - saved her by himself. So we do have those miracles with one person, but if I was trying to tell somebody who has the power, it's hard to go on a call like that by yourself – especially when they don't make it.

Especially when it's a kid and they don't make it, and you're by yourself. Those – a lot of times – are career-ending calls. It's hard to get through that. If I wanted assembly members and administrations down the road to know, just having two people there makes all the difference in the world, because it's not just you.

That call in Sterling, I drove down to our physician sponsor afterward, I mean I questioned, I questioned for weeks on end after that call. I asked "did I do the right thing?" I went home and questioned – "do I really want to do this?"

We are losing people because of where we're at. We've lost people to other fire departments because they don't run one person stations. Anchorage is screaming and hollering right now, because they are potentially going from three and four person engine staffing down to two."

Deputy Chief Gordon Orth's last day at CES is April 30. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to share memories or good wishes.