Every year at the end of March, firefighters and the family of fallen firefighter Brian Carey meet at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery for a memorial service.
It will be 10 years ago on March 30 when 28-year-old Carey, a rookie firefighter for the Homewood Fire Department, was killed after he rushed into a burning home in an effort to rescue a resident trapped inside.
A lot went wrong that night in the way the situation was handled, acknowledged Homewood Fire Chief Bob Grabowski.
He said there was no chance to save the resident, 87-year-old Wendell Elias, from the burning home by the time firefighters from multiple departments arrived, and Carey should have never been in there.
A federal report would later blame “ineffective fire control tactics” among the factors that led to the death of Carey, who was the first firefighter to be killed in the line of duty in the Homewood Fire Department’s 109-year-old history.