Everett and I were on our way to a fun week at Grandma and Grandpa’s house when we hit an unexpected roadblock.

We had just passed Chetek going Southbound on Hwy 53 when a firetruck with its lights on started merging onto the highway. I slowed down and let the firetruck go ahead of me, and then just stayed as far back as I could.

I could see a big cloud of smoke in the distance, and I thought, “Oh, that must be where the fire truck is headed.”

The firetruck was actually going pretty slow- it didn’t seem like it was in a hurry at all.

Which is probably why another vehicle flew past me and even tried to pass the firetruck. The firetruck moved over to physically block the car from passing them. And good thing too.

Suddenly, that cloud of smoke wasn’t in the distance- it was all around us. We literally drove straight into a fire that was spreading in the ditches and across the highway. The smoke came up so quickly, the woman in the car ahead of me almost rear-ended the truck we were following.

We came up to the scene so fast it was unreal-one moment the fire looked far away, and the next moment were right between the flames.

We ended up being stopped for quite a while as the firefighters worked to put out the fire, so I opted to grab my camera out of the back and get a few pictures. I stayed right next to my car so I wasn’t in the way, and Everett kept yelling at me to stay out of the smoke- he’s very into fire safety right now- so I didn’t stay out too long.

But I do want to draw your attention to the two pictures below. The first image is straight-out-of-camera; I didn’t edit it at all, and it looks exactly like the scene I drove up to. This was taken a while after I had stopped. When I first arrived at the fire, the two pick-up trucks were not there. We had followed the second firetruck into the smoke. If we had not followed that truck, and if that car had passed them like they intended on, they could have easily run straight into the first firetruck on scene that was engulfed in smoke.

The second image is the exact same picture, but with the exposure brought down so you can clearly see the firetruck that was already on scene. With the thick smoke, you could barely see it at all. That little blur on the bottom left corner is the side mirror of the car that passed me.

Emergency scenes are hectic, moving, living situations. If you see an emergency vehicle with its lights flashing, please, pull over, stay back, and let the responders get to where they’re going.

There is nowhere that is so important for you to get to that you can’t wait for a firetruck, ambulance or police car to go ahead of you. We don’t know where they’re going or why- but they also have information that we don’t. Like that the fire is going across the road, not miles away like it looks like.

These people are set out to save lives. Follow the laws and stay back. Don’t get in the way of emergency responders.

I get super fired up about this because my husband is a paramedic. I want him, and all of the other men and women working in dangerous situations to keep our community safe, to come home at the end of their shift- not run over by someone who isn’t paying attention and can’t be bothered by an emergency that isn’t theirs.

It may not be your emergency today, but it could be your emergency tomorrow.

Thanks for reading- and stay safe!

~Carissa