Air crashes, train crashes, explosions and castle fires: retiring Navan fire station officer has seen it all

Sitting in the control booth of Navan Fire Station, which he knows so well, station officer Alfie Kavanagh, one of the country's longest-ever serving firefighters, is looking back on his career prior to his retirement this Friday after 42 years as a fireman. "I joined in 1970, as a part-time fireman. I've been the fire station officer for 32 years here in Navan. The technology has all changed during the time I've been here we've seen hydraulic equipment for road traffic accidents, imaging cameras - beforehand it was obviously much more manual," he says. "Dealing with road accidents was never the job of the fire service originally. It's just the ambulances had no-one else to call - that was for hacksaws and crowbars to rescue people. Now it's hydraulic spreaders and cutters but the job is still the same: rescuing people." When, in 1970, he saw an ad in the Meath Chronicle for a part-time fireman, he was a cabinet-maker on the "wrong" career path. It was certainly a safer one. "Looking back now, we've dealt with air crashes, train crashes, lived through explosions, fought the two castle fires - Slane and Killeen," he recalls. He certainly wasn't doing it for the money. His first ever pay packet he returned to the council, thinking it a mistake that part-time firemen were paid. For the 1991 fire at Slane Castle, which took a third of the castle with it, Alfie Kavanagh and "every pump in the county" fought the blaze for three days and three nights before the embers were finally extinguished. They certainly earned their corn on that 'shout'. "It had taken hold of the castle when we arrived and we had seven units on shifts around the clock - three days and nights. The biggest element of those fires, Slane and Killeen, is the logistics of it. The scale of those operations were the biggest demands - exhausting logistics. Dealing with a castle that's on fire, it's a major, major operation. Slane was the biggest of the lot," says Alfie. But Slane didn't represent the more immediate threat to people that a simple gas leak at a Navan bakery did two decades ago. Spicer's, the Navan bakery, was a scene where just minutes separated life and death. "We got a call about a gas leak. There had been a few gas explosions around the town at that time. We arrived at the car park, maybe around 20 cars in the car park in a gas cloud and you could just see the roofs of the cars. "In the middle of that, there were four workers standing in the middle of the gas cloud talking to each other, not realising that there was this danger of an explosion. The funny part of it was I remember telling the manager that the bakery should be evacuated immediately, that an explosion was imminent and his concern was that "the bread had to go out tomorrow". I told him that he wouldn't have a bakery tomorrow!" The manager relented and took the station officer's advice. "The explosion took place as the last worker was leaving and he was caught by some flying plaster. After the explosion, about twenty cars were on fire, it had smashed the windows on the fire engine. We were lifted off our feet, it broke windows down off Flower Hill Bridge and Loreto Convent as well. It was huge. In all honesty, without brigade involvement or had someone called three minutes later, I'd say the town would have seen its biggest tragedy - the biggest loss of life it ever had." He refuses to call it the most dangerous call-out the brigade has ever had and switches to another incident to illustrate the variety of call-outs the local fire service receives. "One thing I remember was a call-out for a guy trapped 20 or 30 feet down a well," he says. "He was trapped down there and I went down on a ladder to reassure him that everything was going to be okay. He was trapped in the silt in the well. I said I would stay with him until we got him out. "I said to him 'now that I'm staying with you, have you any other worries?' I remember him saying 'Just one, the liners on the well are all slipping and I think it's going to collapse.' That was over in Trim and he was maybe four hours down there. He had been cleaning the well." The silt had acted like quicksand to grab the legs of the stranded man. "We then used high-pressure hoses in and around his legs to control the quicksand and used ropes to get him out. The challenge then was that we might have flooded the well. "I remember seeing the tops of the helmets when I looked up and said to myself 'what am I doing down here?'. We got out and, after that, while I was putting him on the stretcher some guy handed him a bottle of whiskey. I had to laugh. He was being put in the ambulance while taking a drink. But that's the job. I don't think there's a call we haven't dealt with." Some of the fonder memories come from achieving high standards and through the camaraderie of the service. He cites being one of only eight road traffic instructors in the 1990s qualified to judge fire services from all over the world, Navan Fire Station winning the national road traffic accident competition, being the first Irish fire officer ever to judge a British service and when Navan went to the world championships on a former RAF base, the flying of the Tricolour in their honour. The Slane riots ("a full scale attack") and the dreadful 2005 Kentstown bus crash tragedy ("the great sadness of so many taken away so quickly") represent two darker memories of his 42 years but he has no hesitation in recommending the fire service for its "obsession to service the community". "There's a saying that 'if you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life'. If that's the case, I've never worked a day in my life," says Alfie. "It's a unique job, you get a special type of person in the fire service. It's one of the last frontiers. "It's also one of the few jobs where people are running from danger while you are running towards it." Alfie Kavanagh leaves the service this Friday to concentrate on his security firm, Province 5 Security. If he could, though, would he stay on? "I feel at this stage, without sounding bad, that I've done enough and it is time to move on. People forget that in life and in the service that it's so easy to die. Life is short, it's not forever, so when you get a chance of good days, take them."