The person who nominated him would disagree, having cited the many times Mr Old has left events or work when the emergency siren has sounded. On one occasion Mr Old was on stage at a local primary school for his daughter's leaving assembly when the siren went off. He immediately left the stage, "putting his community first as always", in the words of his nominator.
Mr Old, who is station officer at the Stratford fire station, said he has seen "too many" big accidents and fires over his 19 years of service. He approaches each scene with the same attitude, "to turn the negative into a positive, to change the outcome for the people involved". Nowadays, 40 per cent of call outs are medical.
"We do a lot of CPR nowadays, and that can be hard, but equally, it is a great feeling when it is successful".
He remembers one case where he and his colleagues were assisting the ambulance crew at a call-out. "We performed CPR for 45 minutes, then two days later the patient was sat up in bed at Base hospital, reading a newspaper. He was 82 years old."
He often visits a scene or families after an incident. "It's all about connecting with people, be it at a scene and trying to calm someone down, or afterwards, giving them the chance to talk about it."
"Having such a supportive family, Wendy and our three girls, that makes it easier to balance it all," he says. "Behind every firefighter there has to be a supportive family, they all give 200 per cent."
-Stratford Press
