ANDREW FITZGERALD
My father’s been doing it since I can remember. I do enjoy it very well. It’s
one of my favorite pastimes, honestly. I enjoy coming down here and doing
the training. It’s a good thing to give back to the community. There’s not a lot
of ways that I do it, but this is one way, and I do enjoy it. If there’s anything
else that I would do, I don’t think there would be. The one that I particularly
remember is when Rutland Plywood burned (Aug. 20-21, 2014). I wasn’t on
very long, so I was still in the training process. We’re always training, but I
was still learning. When we showed up on scene, and I saw flames on all ends
of the building coming out — it put me in a wow factor. It showed you the
reality of this job. I was there for pretty close to 24 hours. It takes a lot out of
you. You’ve got to be dedicated. It’s a job that you need to dedicate yourself
to because you’re putting yourself in danger, and you’re there for life safety for
other people at the same time, so you’ve got to be on your A-game. There’s not
a lot of room for mistake.
MICHAEL SKAZA, 1ST ASSISTANT CHIEF
I’m the third generation firefighter in my family, so I was kind of
raised around it and took an interest to it. I’ve been here since I was 18
years old. That’s about 25 years. We have an opportunity to serve the
community at basically the worst day of their lives, so there’s a great
feeling of helping people when something like that happens. There’s a
great deal of camaraderie in the fire service that we get to enjoy together,
and there’s a special bond between the people who do this. You’ve got a
great opportunity to develop some great friendships and help people in the
community at the same time.
DILLON NOTTE
I first got started right out of high school. I really liked the idea of the fire
department, and it sounded like a good challenge and fun, and it’s nice to be out
in the community helping everybody out. What really got me motivated was, my
grandfather was on the fire department for quite a few years. And my dad joined
for quite a few years. I figured we might as well keep the legacy ongoing. Three
generations in the fire department — you don’t hear about that too much. It’s
fun and it’s a good challenge, and I like doing it.
RH: Tell me about one job you went on that wasn’t so much fun.
DN: I remember this one fire — (Rosen and Berger Auto Parts) caught on fire
(Feb. 12-13, 2018). It was wicked brutally cold out. It was kind of late at night,
and we were running so much water because we couldn’t get into the building
to get to the fire — the driveway started to freeze, so it was a challenge trying to
keep your feet on the ground and keep the hoses on the fire at the same time.
RUTLAND HERALD HOMETOWN HEROES OCTOBER 2018 • 5