RETIRED MEMBERS
RETIRED MEMBER PROFILE Noel Hyland
Retired Sub-Officer Noel Hyland talks about his family’s DFB legacy, a daring rescue, and enjoying life
T
here are many Hylands in Dublin Fire Brigade, and though it is a surname shared with Firecall’s editor, we are not related. Recently, as editor, I received a call from retired Sub-Officer Michael Hempenstall, who got in touch to tell me about a brave rescue from the Liffey back in 1985 involving one Noel Hyland. It was a great story Michael was eager to share, so it was with pleasure that Firecall contacted Noel to hear about this deed and his career in general. Noel ‘in a different life’ as a DFB Sub-Officer
LEGACY
“We have a good-sized family in Dublin Fire Brigade,” he tells me. “I was the first to join, back in 1976, but in 1981 my two brothers Liam and Paul followed me in. Years later, my son Mark also joined Dun Laoghaire Fire Brigade and wasn’t there long before it amalgamated with Dublin Fire Brigade, then my nephew Cameron joined, and now my grandson Craig and granddaughter Amy have joined as well.”
It’s understandable why the rest of the family followed him into the Brigade, but I ask Noel what led him to join. “I never wanted to do anything else,” he says. “I made five separate applications to join the Brigade, and I’d spent eight years with the Civil Defence Auxilaries, so I had the idea in my head for a long time.
“I got in just under the wire because at that time the cut-off age was 26, and I was accepted and put on the panel when I was 25, and actually began training just when I turned 26, so I just made it!” Noel says his Civil Defence experience stood to him “because I was joining with 32 other people and
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