11 minute read
RETIRED MEMBER PROFILE
RETIRED MEMBER PROFILE Noel Hyland
Retired Sub-Officer Noel Hyland talks about his family’s DFB legacy, a daring rescue, and enjoying life
There 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.
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
Noel ‘in a different life’ as a DFB Sub-Officer
Noel (front row, second from left) with his Dolphin’s Barn C Watch crew and D/O Paddy McMahon (front and centre)
was the only one who had seen a roll of hose in their lifetime” and the training and discipline required were something he was used to.
When training was completed, he was sent out to the newly-built North Strand station to provide manpower ahead of its official opening, before he was posted to Tara Street on C Watch, which he stayed on for his entire career.
He remembers seeing Dublin Fire Brigade transform during this time. “I went through the beginning of the transition from the old pen-and-paper Control Room that at the time we shared with the Eastern Health Board to the newer, separate Control Room,” he tells me. “When I started, both Control Rooms could literally shout over to each other. Older firemen like myself will also remember the call recording in Tara Street, when we had an occurrence book that had to be filled in and updated almost minute by minute, and the three-way phonecalls you had to make to every station in the city, and looking back it was a crazy way of doing things, but it was what we had at the time.”
RESCUE
It was during his time in Tara Street that Noel was involved in the Liffey rescue that Michael Hempenstall told me about, saying that as the officer in charge of the incident, he had composed a letter of praise to his seniors recommending Noel be officially recognised for his bravery. No official record of the incident remains, which is why Michael Hempenstall urged that the act “gets the recognition it deserves”.
Noel is full of praise for Sub-Officer Hempenstall too. “Mick Hempenstall would have been a doer,” he tells me. “He wasn’t afraid of getting stuck in. I had great time for him, and he always knew who was on his engine and what crew he had working with him.”
Regarding the incident itself: Three men who had been sitting on the wall with their backs to the river near O’Connell Bridge had been pushed in by a group of other men, and none of them were able to swim to safety.
“It was a very busy night and I was put on the emergency tender to respond to this call,” Noel recalls. “It was high tide and the water was on its way back out to sea, and when we saw the situation, I remember saying to Michael we were going to have to go in and get these men because they were moving quickly with the tide, and were flailing around.
“I went in and quickly got two of them over to the wall where the lads had dropped ropes down that they could hold on to, but the third man had gone with the tide. I was a strong swimmer back then, so I swam after him and got hold of him about 150 yards from where he had first gone in.
“Ladders were dropped down over the wall and the three men were brought up to a waiting ambulance, and before I even got out of the water myself, they had been taken away. I’d say that from the time we arrived to the time they were climbing up the ladder couldn’t have been more than five minutes,” he adds. “Back then in times like that you had to work on your own initiative, and thinking back, you’d hate to think how far down the river that man would have gone in that tide if
I’d had to put on a flotation device and harness. We worked with what we had.”
With the three men rescued, SubOfficer Hempenstall wrote up his recommendation, but the first Noel heard about it was when he received a letter of commendation from Michael Walsh, the Assistant Chief Fire Officer at the time.
“It just said he had gotten the report of the incident and sent it to the City Manager, suggesting that I be given a President’s Award,” he tells me, “but then I got a call from the superintendent of Pearse Street saying he had gotten the letter back from City Hall, but that because there was no Garda presence at the scene, there was no written record, and so the recommendation couldn’t go any further.
“That was the end of the matter, as far as I was concerned,” he tells me. “I just got on with the job, but the funny thing is that I remember immediately after the incident, I went back to Tara Street and had a shower, but because in those days you had very little uniform, I had to get a loan of a shirt, trousers and a pair of socks, and ten minutes later I was back waiting for the next call. I didn’t even get a pair of jocks!”
“They were different times, and we did the best we could with what we had. In fairness to the Corporation, they had what was available at the time to allow us to do the job and you couldn’t expect things that weren’t even thought of at the time, all the cutting equipment they have now, for example. We went to RTCs with two crowbars.”
DOLPHIN’S BARN
After ten years at Tara Street, Noel was posted on a permanent transfer to Dolphin’s Barn, which he says was very busy because with Tallaght fire station not yet built, the station covered a huge area, and there were many more memorable moments.
“Those moments I remember would have been done collectively, turning out on engines with hard-working crews,” he says. “But there was one incident about 25 years ago when myself and my colleague Frank Cullen got a call over to Fatima Mansions to a woman in the very late stages of labour. We knew we wouldn’t be able to get her down out of the flats and into an ambulance, so we helped deliver twin babies there and then. I thought no more about it, but a few years ago I was messing around on Facebook one night and a message came in from a woman who said she hoped I didn’t mind her asking, but was I ever in Dublin Fire Brigade, because she thought I might have delivered her and her twin in Fatima Mansions.
“She told me she had been looking to talk to me for 15 years and came across me on Facebook by accident, and that her mother always talked about two firefighters helping her to give birth in her bedroom in the flats, and I could see from what she was writing on Facebook that she was telling all her friends she had found me, and her friends were congratulating her and saying how she had been looking for so long, so it was clear she was delighted about it. That was a great feeling for me.”
After eight years, he was promoted to Sub-Officer and moved to Dun Laoghaire station where he also occasionally filled in as acting S/O, and spent the rest of his career there until he retired in 2005.
The Hyland family (back row from left): Noel’s nephew Cameron, grandson Craig, son Mark with (front row from left) brother Liam, granddaughter Amy, Noel, and brother Paul outside the Training Centre
RETIREMENT
“Retiring wasn’t something I had planned years in advance, but because I joined when I was 26, by the time I had my 30 years nearly done I was 55 and that was the magic number,” he tells me. “Myself and my wife had been doing a lot of travelling and realised there were so many places to see and things to do outside of life in the Fire Brigade, so we never looked back after that.
“I have to say, I enjoyed every minute of the job, right up to the day I left,” he adds. “What I enjoyed most was that you literally didn’t know what you were going to be doing from minute to minute. The camaraderie within the station never leaves you either. We always had good times, even out at incidents.
“I have to say I worked under some
fantastic officers too. There was a D/O in Dolphin’s Barn when I joined called Paddy McMahon, and I don’t think I could have had more respect for any man in my life as I did for him. The people I soldiered with in the Brigade, their dedication to the job was unbelievable, from the officers right down to the firefighters, they were a great bunch. I’m sure every crew in every station feels like they are the best crew in the Brigade, and to be honest, they all hold that accolade.”
Having said all that, Noel says he is happy to have been in Dublin Fire Brigade when he was, and that he was ‘of his time’. “I used to say that if I had to do it all again, I would, but I know it’s not the same job now that it was when I was working,” he tells me.
“You do miss the camaraderie, but you can also step outside of the DFB and have friends from other activities. I became very involved in motorhoming towards the end of my career. My wife and I were always going away after I retired, we did a lot of continental travel and made a lot of friends that way, becoming involved with a club that I became chairman of for six years.
“Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived two lives, because the fire brigade was 15 years ago now, and I am still fit and healthy and I have to think back and go ‘did I ever work?’ trying to recall those days.”
Noel says he now spends his time with family and walking to keep fit, but while he is ‘between motorhomes’, he is on the lookout for a new one and aims to return to some of his favourite spots around Europe when the chance arises, and to just enjoy life.
“I have had a very happy life and I am happy with it the way it is now,” he says. “It gave me a good life, it raised my family comfortably, and I will be forever grateful for that. I steered my brothers in, my son, my nephew and my grandchildren, and Craig and Amy are having the time of their lives because I told them both that you will never look back when you go into this job.”
Noel Hyland
Noel’s letter of commendation from Assistant Chief Fire Officer Michael Walsh
The family meets then-Lord Mayor of Dublin Nial Ring
