Night Shift: Fighting Fire and Delivering Babies

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Name: Keshia Terry

Occupation: Firefighter Paramedic, Cincinnati Fire Department

Years on Job: 4

Shift: 7 a.m. to 7 a.m. (and 48 hours off)

You work night and day. How are the night hours different than day? We make a lot more serious calls during the night. And especially on a Friday or Saturday night when it’s really warm outside, we might unfortunately get some assault calls. But sometimes there’s good stuff too. I have had the pleasure of delivering a baby. Whenever you are able to help someone who’s suffering or is in pain, it’s always rewarding.

What do you like about working at night? Going around the city at night, Cincinnati is surprisingly quite beautiful. If you ever drive downtown with the city all lit up, especially that Great American building with the crown on it, it kind of sheds a different perspective on the city—it looks peaceful.

What do you do if you’re tired? Whenever a call comes in there’s that little bit of adrenaline that wakes us up. There’s at least four of us on a company. We have this tremendous teamwork, so if I notice that somebody on my company is tired or dragging, I’ll kind of pull them along and then maybe pick up a little bit of slack. Or vice versa. We all work together to get the job done.

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