The Nanny Diaries: The Charleston Nine

On this evening, exactly one year ago, a tragedy occurred in the city where I was born and raised.

My family and I left on a Royal Caribbean cruise on Father's Day of last year. Three days into our trip, we learned that nine firefighters had died in a horrific warehouse fire.

My first thoughts went to the men's families. My father has one of the most dangerous careers in the world - and to say that I've never thought that he or any of his friends could die doing their jobs would be a lie.

My next concern was for my father. Although my dad is a Battalion Chief for the city directly north of Charleston (Mt. Pleasant), I didn't wonder if he knew any of the men who had been killed; I wondered how many of them he knew. Although Charleston is a large city made up of several different fire departments, everyone in the fire service knows everyone else.

Firefighters become each other's family. Having grown up around the fire station my entire life, I can testify. For every two days my dad spent with my mom, my brother, and me, he spent one with his firehouse family. When my dad's duty day fell on Thanksgiving, Christmas, or some other holiday, we'd spend it with him and his firemen at the station.

Since we were on the cruise when we heard about the fire, my brother and I offered to go to the computer room on the top floor of the ship to see what we could find out about the fallen firefighters. I dreaded googling "warehouse fire Charleston, SC" because I was afraid of what I would find. Bryn and I scanned the list of nine names and didn't recognize any of them. That didn't mean our dad wouldn't.

We printed the information we found and took it back to Daddy. He hung his head after reading through the list as he realized he had worked with two of them and met a few of the others in the 25+ years he had worked in the fire service. I could tell that Daddy's heart was broken for the men and their families...and because he couldn't be there to help.

By the time we returned to Charleston six days after the fire had occurred, most of the funerals as well as a memorial service held at the North Charleston Coliseum had already taken place. It took us days to sift through unopened newspapers and read about what had caused the fire, why the building had collapsed, and how the City of Charleston Fire Department could have been more prepared to fight a fire of such magnitude. The stories were gut-wrenching. I cried as I read through story after story after story.

In the midst of all the tragedy, I received a call from my mom's friend telling me that my wedding invitations had arrived and were ready to be picked up. Happy to escape the sadness for a bit, I drove down to get them. As I walked out of the store, wedding invitations in hand, I heard sirens. I walked to the street to see the procession of fire truck after fire truck on their way to lay the final firefighter to rest at a nearby cemetery.

I stood on the sidewalk with my head bowed and let the tears stream down my face. I prayed for the children who lost their daddies. I prayed for the wives who lost their husbands. I prayed for everyone who had lost someone irreplaceable in their life. I cried because I knew he wouldn't be the last firefighter who would die trying to save someone else's life.

Please take a moment to pray for the families of: