The Legacy Letters

by Janice Landry

  JL: “But you went?”

  AT: “Yeah. I wanted to see the baby.”

  Al Tweten’s gravelly, deep voice softened during the last answer and our final exchange.

  JL: “Why did you want to go?”

  AT: “It was the first baby I helped deliver. Well, I started to help deliver; she delivered it in the hospital.”

  JL: “You were the only person in the world who was there for her.”

  AT: “Yeah.”

  JL: “That is beautiful.”

  AT: “I’d like to think I’ve got a bit of a heart.”

  JL: “I think you have a big heart. We’ll leave it at that.”

  Al’s experiences have been wide-ranging and expansive, from helping the very young and disadvantaged to having tea with a president. His compassion has guided him to serve, protect, and assist, drawing on his vast skill set and extensive training.

  The self-described “atypical responder” has thrived in the “grey areas.” Finding the outlet of music has been essential to Al Tweten’s mental health and physical well-being. His legacy plays out here, in his letter which follows.

  Al Tweten’s Legacy Letter

  To Non-Traditional Responders:

  Not being a paramedic, police officer, firefighter, or infantry soldier, you do not expect others to be as familiar with PTSD as these professions. Such is not the case.

  For many years, I was an airport duty manager at Canada’s largest airport. With the run-of-the-mill [tasks] that arose each day, being in charge of emergencies was one of the most important [responsibilities] of the job.

  One had to understand aircraft malfunctions and the possible outcome of these malfunctions, so that a plan of attack could be formulated. This included briefing responding agencies, as well as coordinating efforts with these agencies, including air traffic control.

  Aircraft emergencies and actual crashes were not the only things that we were prepared for: people falling down an “up” escalator and having the flesh ripped off of their legs, accidents involving the baggage belt system [nearly] ripping off a baggage attendant’s arm, and the ensuing action to free her from the machinery, as well as a curious little boy exploring, unbeknownst to his parents, and ending up screaming at the bottom of the baggage delivery system – missing a leg.

  Seeing these kinds of injuries, and being the person to direct the immediate rescue of these people, weighs heavily upon you after the fact.

  Did I do enough to help them? Did I direct the rescue in the safest and most efficient method possible? Have I made provisions for the staff who assisted and [who have] seen this horrendous injury? [These are] just three of the many questions that come to mind afterwards.

  Only complete confidence in your training, knowing how to relieve stress, and having trust in your team can ensure that you go home at night with a feeling of satisfaction, and yes, accomplishment.

  After retiring, I joined Toronto Ambulance Services [as it was then known] as a part-time dispatcher and listened to people in trouble.

  How does one react to a person calling to say someone just went by their window on the seventeenth floor?

  What do you say to a … girl who has just witnessed a shooting while the shooter has still not been found?

  Once again, knowing how to relieve your own stress is paramount to being able to successfully do the job and have trust in the entire system.

  As you read this book, I hope that you find tips and tricks to deal with unusual stress that the average … person would never face.

  15

  Michael and Tracey Hilliard: The Other Firefighter

  Michael Hilliard has faced his fair share of unusual stress. Michael currently lives and works in Cape Breton. The forty-nine-year-old is a veteran firefighter, the first in his family, who has served as both a volunteer and career member at varying stations around the island since 1991. He also worked a four-year stint as a 911 operator and police/fire dispatcher.

  Since 2013, he has been serving with the Albert Bridge Volunteer Fire Department, where he is deputy chief. Michael is also a training officer. The firefighter additionally serves as a volunteer member of the Cape Breton Regional Fire Service Training and Prevention Team. Before Albert Bridge, he volunteered for twenty-two years with the Grand Lake Road Department.

  He has been a career firefighter with the Cape Breton Regional Fire & Emergency Service since 2000. He works out of the New Waterford Station.

  “I always wanted to be a firefighter even before I worked in radio,” Michael said. He worked in radio on the island for eleven years from 1985 to 1996. During his work as a broadcaster, in 1992, the year he started as a volunteer firefighter, Michael became the news, at the very station where he worked the night shift as an on-air announcer.

  It happened when he was only eight months on the job as a first responder, then stationed and working as a volunteer firefighter with the Grand Lake Road Volunteer Fire Department in Sydney. He was twenty-four years old. A major incident occurred at the Cape Breton Correctional Facility, a medium-security jail which is operated by the Nova Scotia Department of Justice.

  Michael and his wife Tracey, whom he met at the radio station, were newlyweds at that time. “I was such a raw rookie [on the job] at that point it wasn’t even funny,” Michael said, reflecting back on a year, twenty-five years earlier, that was a turning point in the lives of both his family and his wife’s, Tracey Hanratty Hilliard.

  Tracey’s family homestead was two doors down from the fire station, and she comes from a long line of firefighters. The profession is a huge part of their identities. Besides her husband, Tracey’s son, father, sister, brother-in-law, two uncles, and at least six cousins are all firefighters. There are so many in the Hanratty clan it’s difficult to keep track of who currently is a firefighter and who has been one at some point.

  Each New Year’s Day, the whole crew would gather for a potluck dinner at the home of Tracey’s parents, Allan and Dianne Hanratty. On January 1, 1992, also present for the party were Michael’s mother, Leslie Hilliard, and his now deceased grandmother, Matilda.

  Michael was very close with his mother and grandmother. The three lived together in Sydney Mines until Michael and Tracey were married. Then the couple lived downstairs at Tracey’s parents’ home, where the 1992 party was being held, which was near Sydney Airport and Cape Breton University. Everyone was either at the Hanratty home or en route to the New Year’s Day party when a call for help came over the firefighters’ pagers, the technology used by the first responders a quarter-century ago. Scanners and pagers were then typical modes of communication.

  The firefighters were notified of a fire at the Cape Breton Correctional Centre. Michael was driving in Sydney Mines to pick up his mother and grandmother to take them to the party when his pager went off.

  “It said there was a disturbance and fire at the correctional centre,” Michael recalled. He drove to the nearby Hanratty home and dropped Leslie and Matilda off at the party. By a stroke of luck, the Hanratty home was only about a ninety-second drive to the correctional facility.

  Michael left his car at the party and jumped into his father-in-law’s vehicle, initially thinking they were fortunate to be so close to the fire. He and Allan, Tracey’s father, sped to the scene. They were the first firefighters and responders to arrive.

  Michael explained the protocol in effect in 1992: “At that time, the gear was on a cube van. The way we worked it, the first two guys who got to the fire station took their gear out of the van, got dressed, [drove] the first truck, and went to the call. The next guy that came in took the cube van. Then somebody else took the tanker and whatever else trucks were needed, and everybody else went to the fire. We knew our gear was coming to us, so we went to the fire because it was right across the road.”

  “It wasn’t unusual for them to have false alarms … over at the correctional centre,” Tracey explained. That meant when this particular call happened, at about three or 3:30 in the after
noon, no one at the party paid much attention; it was not out of the ordinary. Everyone expected the call to be resolved quickly and for the responding firefighters to return to the potluck dinner.

  “It was almost like a family tradition: if we had a gathering, they would get a call. It’s a family joke. We’re all getting together, where’s the fire going to be? And half of the population of the party would leave because half of them were volunteer firefighters. It’s ten people getting up and leaving,” Tracey said, of the initial reaction to the call on the day of the Hanratty levee.

  The other guests, those who were firefighters and en route to the party, immediately changed direction for the nearby fire station. “So everyone ended up at the fire hall and the wives would take the vehicles and head to Allan and Dianne’s, and all the guys would leave in the fire trucks,” Tracey explained, of how the scene started to unfold.

  Michael and Allan had taken their pagers with them but the other firefighters left theirs behind in their personal vehicles, so their wives ended up driving themselves to the party and taking pagers with them into the Hanratty home.

  Tracey was downstairs in their apartment with Leslie and Matilda. Everyone else was upstairs with her mother, Dianne. The upstairs ladies could hear the situation deteriorate.

  Tracey said she heard nothing because Michael had his pager with him. “The talk on the pagers, when they realized the situation had deteriorated quickly, the communications on the pagers also stopped because the firefighters knew the women were home with the pagers.”

  There were no radios at the time which would allow the first responders to go to a different or private broadcast channel and not be heard. “So they kept things as low as they could on the radios,” she said.

  Word did not stay low for long.

  “A party guest came in a little later and explained perhaps more was going on than originally anticipated, because they heard something about two firefighters being held hostage,” Tracey said.

  Tracey was in the kitchen with everyone when she heard this news the first time. “The wife came in and said, ‘We think there’s a hostage taking over at the correctional centre.’ She had heard it on the pagers. Tracey had not heard anything until the guest announced it to everyone, everyone but Michael’s mother and grandmother, who were still a floor below in the apartment.

  The women upstairs kept the news from Leslie and Matilda to shelter and protect them, until some kind of official word came from police, fire, or corrections. Because Michael was the sole firefighter in his family, the Hilliard ladies were not as accustomed to emergencies as the Hanrattys, who had more experience as a loved one of a first responder.

  “In our family, no news is good news. If something’s wrong, you’re going to hear about it,” Tracey explained, of how they rationalized and tried to remain calm. That changed when word finally came, in an unexpected manner.

  At the party, everyone eventually made their way downstairs to Michael and Tracey’s apartment. At this point, the women had not heard the names of the two firefighters, “but we assumed [who they were] because Mike and Dad were the first [to arrive at the scene],” Tracey said.

  Then a reporter went on the five o’clock news and named the two firefighters without the authorities first confirming or releasing the information. The families had not been notified; they were dumbfounded at the party when it was officially broadcast to the public on the newscast.

  Those gathered at the Hanrattys’ endured significant trauma that day just by listening to the radio staffer discuss the still unconfirmed incident. This example underlines the fact people do not have to be physically present at an emergency scene to be impacted by it.

  Tracey remarked, “Neither of us holds any bad feelings or grudge against [the journalist, who] is a very, very good friend of ours. He wanted a story and I think because we both worked in media, we kind of let it go, because, at the end of the day, everything was fine.”

  Tracey also worked at the radio station from 1989 to 1991. And Michael worked in radio from 1985 to 1996. Being first to a story requires supreme care and caution. Does being first surpass everything else? Does it beat getting confirmation before broadcasting or printing delicate information? Is being first always the most accurate, ethical, or appropriate avenue? Should the media report a name before the police or authorities have confirmed it?

  Tracey said, “Matilda started crying and she was all upset. What could we tell her? We didn’t know anything that we could tell her. What do you say at a time like that? … It’s chaos.”

  Despite the headline news and ensuing upset at the party, Tracey said she believed the situation was going to be okay because they had also heard on the newscast that the RCMP were on the scene of the hostage taking at the correctional centre.

  “The ladies of the [Hanratty] family are so used to being wives and daughters and whatevers of firefighters that we don’t panic until we know for sure, can see with our own eyes that there is a reason to panic. And we knew Mike and Dad. I knew between Mike and Dad, if there was a way out of there, they would get out of there. My heart sank a little, but was I beyond scared? I don’t think so because it was a part of who we were. Michael’s mother and grandmother weren’t used to that,” Tracey said. “So they get the raw emotion of hearing what they’re hearing on the news and just then reacting.”

  It all started when Allan and Michael arrived first to the correctional facility.

  “When we got to the correctional centre, the guards met us outside and told us the prisoners were rioting. They set fire to some mattresses but they [the guards] couldn’t get the [fire in the] mattresses out. We knew [the facility] had breathing apparatus in the building, so Tracey’s father thought, ‘If the guards are in there without breathing apparatus, we can put the breathing apparatus on, go in there, put the fire out, go back and have our party,’” Michael explained.

  The correctional centre also had hoses they could use. The two firefighters entered the facility and immediately put on air packs, but they were not wearing their bunker gear. This is a crucial fact, because it meant they were using correctional centre equipment and were dressed in civilian clothing. They did not look like firefighters, but instead like prison guards or corrections staff.

  The prisoners were not initially bothering them. The mattresses were located in a cell on a range in what Michael described as the maximum security wing, a fact that had not been conveyed to the firefighters.

  “They also didn’t tell us the prisoners from that wing, who had started the fire and the riot, were on the other side of the smoke,” he said. The smoke was so thick neither Allan nor Michael could see the prisoners, who were about twenty feet from them.

  At one point, Allan’s bell on his breathing apparatus sounded, indicating he was running low on air. The two retreated to the nearby guards’ station where they knew there was another air pack.

  Allan was having difficulty switching out his breathing apparatus. Michael bent down on one knee to assist when the novice firefighter noticed some movement out of the corner of his eye.

  “Somebody hollered, ‘Close the door!’” Michael recounted. The two firefighters locked themselves in the guards’ station, which was enclosed in thick plate glass. “I don’t know where they all came from; there were guys out there yelling and screaming and banging on the glass.”

  The mattress fire continued to burn.

  The riot escalated with the two firefighters trapped alone. There were no guards left at the station.

  Off the guards’ station, there was a small washroom for the staff. “We figured – reinforced plate-glass windows with security mesh in it, we’re going to be nice and safe until the guards come in and get everything under control. Until they throw the metal squeegee out of the mop bucket through the window. I have no faith in plate-glass windows anymore,” Michael said.

  “There were toilets smashed. They were throwing pieces of broken pottery at each other. They had broom handles; everythi
ng they had was a weapon,” the firefighter explained, of the chaos that surrounded them.

  Allan grabbed his son-in-law’s arm and pulled him into the washroom. They closed and locked the door.

  Allan managed to grab a correctional centre two-way radio before entering the washroom. It was their only line of communication from the bathroom. “He said, ‘There’s two firemen stuck in the bathroom.’” The staff and management now knew the inmates had two hostages.

  The bathroom was designed for one person. It was approximately four feet wide and six feet in length, according to Michael. It was located near the centre of the prison and had no windows. Inside there was a toilet, sink, and mirror. The two men both weighed between 220 and 240 pounds. Allan was about six feet tall and Michael stood at five foot nine inches in height. There was not a lot of room for two large firefighters wearing breathing apparatus.

  “The first part wasn’t too bad. The guards knew we were in there. They were working to get us out. They said, ‘Stay there. We’ll get to you.’ That was all well and good, until the door opened,” Michael said.

  Allan had locked the door by pushing a button inward. When the prisoners ransacked the guards’ station, they had found the keys to the door. “The button popped out on the door … They didn’t realize we were firefighters, they thought we were guards,” Michael said, of how hard the prisoners tried to get to them and why.

  “The handle started to turn. Allan grabbed the handle and jammed his thumb over the button and put his other hand between the door and the jamb. I braced my foot off the toilet and [put] my shoulder against the door.”

  Allan and Michael held that position for thirty minutes.

  Michael has no idea how many prisoners were on the other side of the door. “Allan said about twenty minutes into it, ‘Mikey, I don’t know how long I can stand here. My leg is starting to shake.’ I said, ‘Allan, your whole damn body is shaking. I can feel you right through the door.’ It was the strain and it was the stress. All I know was – they weren’t getting through the door,” said Michael.