Rescue 911

Tales from a First Responder

By: Michael Morse

Narrated by: Danny Campbell

People from all walks of life call 911 when things go bad. These are their stories, told by the people who respond and make things better.

First responders often don't tell stories, preferring to keep what happens at work private. Rescue Captain Michael Morse changes that with these heartfelt descriptions of hundreds of emergency calls, with the usual coverings peeled back, exposing the bizarre, heartbreaking, and often hilarious reactions to 911 emergencies.

©2017 Michael Morse (P)2020 Tantor

narration not pleasant

The narrator was hard to listen to, like a 30 year smoker. The stories were heartfelt and some caused you to just shake your head. Some would bring a tear (will be a long time before I forget the one about the dog).

The reality of EMS

Michael does a great job of recounting many ups and downs in the EMS profession. It can be very rewarding and also very challenging. It requires someone with significant dedication!

Decent book of vignettes

The stories in the book are told from the point of view of an experienced firefighter. They are randomly placed in the book with little connection one to another, I would have liked to see them grouped, for example by type of intervention or patient, but I guess this grouping might reflect real life - you never know what you’re going to get. The issue is that it’s hard to keep track or be interested - most of the times the story of the persons described is not known past the intervention. As a progressive European I did not care for (but understood it as a cultural phenomenon) for the right-wing politica of the narrator. For example I am confused why he believed that telling a young girl that she will break a lot of hearts should be a comment that is affirming and life-changing for her, as the narrator believes it to be. Respect for this very difficult line of work. I would have loved to hear more about their protocols and learned more, but this was not a book about being a firefighter, it was a firefighter’s personal history of his work.

Interesting short stories, weird political rants.

I really enjoyed this book for several hours, the stories are unconnected but still interesting. Then the author dives into a long rant about socialism and how no one deserves anything (including basic human needs). It's jarring and completely out of nowhere. After that, I feel like the author made a real point to show how much disdain he had for certain patients and I stopped listening soon after.