Four Chicago firefighters have died in the line of duty this year. That’s the highest number of fatalities for the department in 25 years.
Andrew “Drew” Price was the most recent, sustaining fatal injuries after falling through a roof while battling a blaze in Lincoln Park. His memorial service on Monday, attended by thousands, seems like it was really something. Price came across in remembrances as a true character, a firehouse prankster, one of the hardest-working members of Engine Co. 55, and the driver of Truck 44 whom kids in the neighborhood loved for his Hawaiian-style hand wave greeting them from the driver’s seat.
He joins Lt. Kevin Ward, Lt. Jan Tchoryk and Jermaine Pelt as Chicago firefighters who lost their lives in 2023 while performing one of the most dangerous jobs we ask our public servants to do.
This Thanksgiving surely will be extraordinarily difficult for the families of all four.
As we sit down to dinner this year, Chicagoans would do well to give thanks to the first responders we too often take for granted. This city wouldn’t survive long without them. In recent years, it’s fair to say many of them have felt less appreciated than in generations past, when thanking firefighters and police officers for their service wasn’t so unusual.
This year has been an especially tragic reminder of the risks the men and women who respond to fires and other emergencies take on our behalf. Firefighters observe that the fires of today are spreading faster and burning hotter because of what’s commonly found in today’s homes. In some respects, firefighting is safer thanks to new technologies the responders have at hand. In others, the job is yet more harrowing.
So to the families and friends of Drew Price, Kevin Ward, Jan Tchoryk and Jermaine Pelt, we humbly give thanks to you all for shouldering the constant burden that comes with a loved one doing this critical job. As Fire Commissioner Annette Nance-Holt told Block Club in April after Tchoryk and Pelt fell in the same week, “You never know if you’re coming home.”
Those four made this city safer when they went to work, but in the end, they did not come home themselves.
Let’s include our first responders in our Thanksgiving thoughts this year. And in the days ahead, here’s a prayer that we don’t wait for tragedy to think to offer our gratitude.
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