It's loud. It's exciting. They were biting at the bit. I had a blast. Well, I broke the door open in less than a minute. It's fast pace. Not like any other classes here. You can see it in their eyes. Boom, boom, boom, boom, stop. They're not just standing around the room, just staring. They're engaged in the operations. I'm having fun all day. A lot of them looked at the door and I thought, this is impossible. I can't do this. Adapt, overcome and move forward. 60 seconds. Later when I heard that would crack, you could just see their face go. You know, I I can't believe I just did that. I'm excited to do it tomorrow. I'm excited. I think we definitely have some students that when I leave Berkeley High School, we're going to go right into the Firehouse. We risk our lives by going in. Michael Pierce, senior I am the public safety and firefighter instructor here at Berkeley High School. We're not meant to go into a burning building. Everything within our DNA tells us to run away from a situation like that. I love coming to work. I love the environment. I love the people I work with. I love the students. It's it's something that's really hard to. Plane, you know until you experience it and I want to come up and I want to assess my door. But we've got 16 kids that's in the fire one program and they all have a just a tremendous passion to be in this class. Just like the feeling of like helping people. It gives me like a more of a satisfaction, hard working, good hearted. They're just good students. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. You know my goal was to make this room as much as possible feel like a fire department. They were so excited that. They found out that he was having this class and then once he told him that we were getting gear I bought for us and so we were getting a fire truck. They were just they were just screaming with joy. Holy crap like we have actual fire truck at the school now when I walk in and see this. Giant fire truck. And I'm just like, oh oh look at it. We actually got it. I just wanted this class to feel different than anywhere else. I definitely didn't expect that. I thought we were just going to have like the gear, tools, you know, what other class are you be able to take? You know where you get to ride around in a fire truck. You know where you get to suit up and and do the job of of heroes of the past. It's going to be one of the kind of experience. What's Firefighter 1? Firefighter one is the actual certification. When students get done with that class, they will have their Hazmat operations certification. Next year, they'll have a chance to come back and take fire. Two, they can actually leave high school. As professional firefighters, I wouldn't want to go anywhere else for this certification. I want to be right here. You know, a lot of these kids have a true desire to do this stuff. I want to do this. I want to be a firefighter. We can train homegrown students. My plan is to become a career firefighter. So when they they get out here, there is no, I'm homesick. I want to go back to their home. Yeah, I want to stick like look. We should have timed it out that several of our students, they are second, third and 4th generation firefighters. When I was younger, my mom used to give me like toy fire trucks and like have like a bunk bed like that looks like a fire truck and all that stuff. So I was really just growing up around it. You have to have some sort of motivation or something to get up in the morning to do it daily. Like you have a reason to do it and what's your reason? Probably my father. They all man. My father was Michael French. He was assistant engineer at Charleston. On June 18th, 2007, a massive fire engulfed the Sofa Super Store in West Ashley, killing nine brave firefighters. Michael French only 27 years old when that fire took his life. Mikey's love for the fire department started when he got his first toy fire truck at the age of 2. Diane French still has all of the Matchbox fire truck cars Mikey played with and collected as a little boy by age 14. Michael became a volunteer firefighter with the Monks Corner Rural Fire Department in 2007. That would have been one or not even 1 yet. Yeah, I was. I was Pretty Little, yeah. You know, I can't think of a more humbling responsibility than knowing why he's doing this, you know, and the passion he has and the reason behind it feels like carrying on his legacy, if you will. That's how I look at it. I'm finishing what he couldn't finish. I don't know that I'm deserving of being the person to, to to start this, to lead this, you know, wanting to give it everything I have to to. To see succeed, I try to not look at the bad things and I just try to stay focused on the the positive. And I try to look at like I'm going to be helping people. And that's all. I look good. Yeah. I'm just trying to look at the positive. You know, being in the fire service, it means something different. We we stop and we pause and you know, we. We feel every loss. I hope I leave them with the fact that there is a place you can blow and you can make a difference to other people and it's just being there for each other. It's like a brotherhood. And when you come in, it's family and the fire service. Family still means something. Knowing I can help others, that kind of makes me enjoy it a lot. It's just bigger than just being a firefighter. It's that belonging. It's that wanting to be there for each other. Having this in high school is what the fire service needs. Knowing that I have the knowledge and knowing that I'm getting the knowledge to do this and to help people by getting them into the programs like this is only going to help their careers later on. Go. If you wanted to do something like this, or even if it's something that you're interested in, go for it every moment, every second, every day. If it's worth it. It's dangerous, but it's the best job in the world if you're wondering whether this program is. Is worth the effort that's going into it? It absolutely is. These students are one day going to be the ones that's there for you, and I really believe that.
