On The Line

This year’s Tupelo Christmas Parade grand marshals share their 120-year history and inside details about the Tupelo Fire Department.

Written by Eugene Stockstill   |  Photographed by Joe Worthem

This year is the Tupelo Fire Department’s 120th anniversary, and the department will be grand marshals for Reed’s annual Tupelo Christmas Parade, taking place Dec. 5. We took advantage of the big occasion to catch a quick glimpse of life inside a fire department, with Chief Brad Robinson and Sergeant Garner Holcomb as our guides.

Holcomb, 27, from Pontotoc, has a photo of himself dressed in firefighters’ gear as a kindergartner and standing with his mom and teacher, a little boy wanting to be a firefighter. Somewhere along the line, he lost the vision, and after studying criminal justice in college and graduating, he had no clue what he wanted to do.

That’s when his mom, a school nurse, suggested he try out for the Tupelo Fire Department.

Holcomb went from thinking she was joking to taking her up on it. He applied to the city, passed a short, standardized test, then passed the physical by running a mile and a half in under 14 minutes and doing at least 10 pullups, 35 pushups and 45 situps.

Day two of initial testing, Holcomb suited up in gear and air packs for some “functional firefighting.” Simulated fire drills, in other words. The department’s training center has a two-story “heat building” where they run “fire evolutions,” a confined, culvert-like space for simulated rescues of a stuck child and a six-story tower for climbing.

After a year of provisional training, Holcomb attended a seven-week training session at the state’s fire academy, which he compared to a boot camp. But because of the provisional training, “day one, we knew what we were doing,” he said. There was classwork on top of classwork and lots of physical training.

Fast-forward to this interview. Holcomb works as one of eight sergeants in the city department tasked with helping others at their most vulnerable. It is a job that outsiders have many misconceptions about.

Today’s fire department in Tupelo includes seven stations, the training center and just under 100 workers, from rookie firefighters to chief. The department has a volunteer chaplain, too. A firefighter works for 24 straight hours, never sleeps deeply on high-risk duty, never goes anywhere without a radio and has too many maintenance and training duties on any given day to be bored on the job. Not to mention the fact that the department fielded almost 5,800 emergency calls last year, or about 15 calls per day. The job comes with its share of fun and

games, too.

“We’ve thrown fireworks, we’ve gotten cats out of trees,” said Holcomb, who remembered another funny moment, too. “At the time it wasn’t funny. We got chased by some dogs that we didn’t know were at the scene. It scared the mess out of us.”

One of the officers, who hates dogs, was on top of the vehicle when Holcomb got back.

The phrase fire department is something of a misnomer. According to the department’s website, fire personnel respond to “wrecks, medical emergencies, missing persons, hazardous material spills and technical rescues, such as rope, confined space, trench and swift-water rescues.”

That’s what put Robinson on the coast during hurricane season last year as a part of a state task force that navigated residents endangered by floodwaters to safety during Hurricane Isaac. But try to get him to gush about his heroics, and the 48-year-old, two-year chief will turn soft-spoken and understated.

Holcomb adopted the same tone when he talked about his part in helping save people from a burning building on Tupelo’s east side.

“It’s controlled chaos,” the 27-year-old sergeant from Pontotoc said. “If you look at it from the outside, it’s chaos. People are screaming,” he said. Hoses are flying, water is spraying, but it’s all part of another day on the job.

Through the years, disaster has rewritten the fire department manual. That happened during the infamous 1936 tornado season that spawned a storm that wiped out much of Tupelo, which was a small town at the time. It happened again on a smaller scale in the 1970s, when a big fire at an old Sunshine Mills site exploded after dust from pet food manufacturing ignited.

“It changed the dynamics of the fire department,” Robinson said. “Nowadays they have all sorts of things in place to prevent that from happening.”

Wondering if you’ve got the athleticism it takes to make it as a firefighter?

“It doesn’t take a D1 athlete. I was not even a high school athlete, but I did like to work out. I used to be into weightlifting only,” said Holcomb, who now mixes cardio work with strength training. “It’s no good being able to lift 400 pounds without being able to run a half mile and still be able to breathe.”

But Holcomb said there’s something much more important to consider: “We help people” is the department’s motto.

“You have to have the eagerness to help the people,” he said. “If you don’t have that drive right off the bat, you don’t have it.”

Fire Safety ABCs

Here are a few tips from the Tupelo Fire Department on having a safe, fire-free home, especially during the colder months.

• Put smoke alarms on every level of the house and near sleeping areas.

• Test batteries every three months.

• Never ignore the chirp of a smoke alarm.

• Install fire extinguishers (type ABC for all wood, electrical and liquid fires) on every level of the house, especially the kitchen and the garage.

• Know the PASS method for using a fire extinguisher: Pull the pin, Aim, Squeeze the handle, Sweep.

• Using a space heater? Keep all flammable items at least three feet away from it; plug it directly into the wall and placed on a hard level surface; avoid using power strips and extension cords; unplug space heater when not in use.

• Keep an eye on cooking food, use a timer and avoid wearing loose clothing while cooking.

• Keep cooking areas clear and clean of grease.

• Emergency? Get out, and call 911.