By Gene Warner
Buffalo News
BUFFALO, N.Y. — He can’t rush into buildings anymore and fight fires. Not after the devastating injuries that put him in a coma for 31 days and took his right leg. But a passion for firefighting — and helping rescue people — still runs through his bloodstream.
Mark P. Reed will be a firefighter, a Buffalo firefighter, a member of Engine 31, until the day they put him in the ground.
And when that happens, Reed plans to be buried in his dress uniform.
But now, Reed dons a different uniform, as a member of the Lancaster Volunteer Ambulance Corps. He has worked as a dispatcher, then as an EMT. And he’s risen through the ranks, to the position of assistant director of operations.
The calls he answers are a little different now: Strokes. Seizures. Heart attacks. Bad falls. Car crashes.
The assignment, though, remains the same. To help others in crisis.
For Reed, it’s all about the camaraderie, whether that’s found fighting a fire in Buffalo or answering an ambulance call in Lancaster or Depew.
“To save somebody is the most incredible thing in the world,” he said on the back porch of his family’s Lancaster home. “You’re a life-saver, or you saved somebody’s house.
“It wasn’t like I did it. We all did it. Not one person does it in the ambulance corps. We all do it, just like in the fire department.”
It’s been almost four years since that fateful evening of June 10, 2007, when Reed tried to take a hose line through the side door of a vacant Wende Street house torched by a 15-year-old kid.
Roughly 800 pounds of brick chimney toppled onto Reed’s head and body, breaking 35 bones, fracturing his skull, puncturing his lung and causing a brain bleed. He was in a coma for a month, and surgeons had to amputate his right leg nine days after the fire. He now uses a prosthetic leg.
Despite it all, “I still love firefighting,” Reed said. “I know I can’t physically put out fires in the city. But I am a firefighter ‘til the day God takes me. Being in the ambulance corps, I still get to help people.”
Reed turned 40 last month, and few people would be so appreciative of reaching that milestone. He and his wife, Nancy, an intensive-care nurse at Mercy Hospital, now have a 14-month-old son, Connor.
The Reeds were in the process of adopting a child before the Wende Street fire. That obviously put everything on hold. Nancy Reed quoted the philosophy of their local adoption agency, Adoption STAR, when a couple has to wait a long time for their child:
“Your baby just isn’t born yet.”
So despite all of Mark Reed’s horrific injuries, the Reeds know they probably wouldn’t have adopted Connor if it hadn’t been for that awful night.
Mark Reed credits God, his wife, the firefighters that pulled him out from under a rubble of bricks, Rural/Metro Medical Services workers and the staff at Erie County Medical Center.
“I could have passed away,” he said. “Every single person had a hand in me being here today. It was part of where my life was supposed to go.”
That fate led him to the Lancaster Volunteer Ambulance Corps, which answered some 3,400 calls last year. He also volunteers in the ECMC Trauma Intensive Care Unit and with the Lancaster Office of Emergency Management, and gives inspirational talks to firefighters.
“I couldn’t sit at home and think about what happened in ’07,” he said. “This is helping me forget about it. It wouldn’t be fair to my wife or my son. It definitely continues to give me a purpose to help others.”
Nancy Reed was asked what she thinks of her husband’s work with the ambulance corps.
“I think it’s great for him,” she said. “Is it great for me? There’s always that fear. But Mark and I are both in the profession of helping people. You never stop.
The Reeds don’t try to gloss over the challenges that his injuries have brought. While Mark Reed kids about his missing leg — telling people he’s got a hangnail — he admits that he really misses his sense of taste and smell.
“There are days when you want to go under a rock and cry,” Nancy Reed said. “But there are great days, too. Every day is a gift.”
Mark Reed shows off his old fire helmet, which looks remarkably intact after being hit with almost half a ton of bricks.
“It’s a part of me,” he said of the helmet. “It’s a part of my crew, my firehouse. That helmet now is my son’s.
“If he ever wants to be a firefighter, we’ll support him all we can.”
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