fire fighters

Last night's blog reminds me of another old-time radio show which I had never heard of until someone sent me an MP3 CD of the 140 episodes that still exist. The show was called Fire Fighters.

From the mid-to-late 1940's Fire Fighters was both an entertaining as well as informative program. Lots of shows (both radio and television) have focused on police and detective work, but this might well be the only radio show of this kind.

Each episode was only about twelve minutes long, and I admit that it took me a few episodes to get caught up in the story, but once I did, I looked forward to each new episode.

There are some things about the series which were probably pretty standard in the 1940's but which seem rather goofy today, primarily the "gosh golly!" attitude of the youth in the series.

If there's a down-side to the series it would be the fact that it focused on one particular fire fighter -- a fresh out of the academy young Tim Collins, whose father was a former chief of the fire department but who died fighting a fire. By following one person, that young man tended to move around to different departments a lot, and because of his status as Chief Collins' son, he seems to get some special privileges.

That aside, I felt that the series did a great job of "showing" how they fight fires, and even how panic ensues in the event of a major, catastophic fire. One storyline of a major building fire had me thinking of the 9-11 disaster it played so well.

A really excellent series, and one most people have likely never even heard of.