Bad News Reaches Costa Rica...

This morning before we headed out from Los Suenos for our 4 hour run up the beach to Flamingo/Guanacaste, I received some bad news. There was a freak boating accident in Stuart on Sunday where a personal watercraft was struck by another boat, killing the operator of the watercraft. He was a friend from the Fire Department, and it turns out some other firefighters were on the other boat involved in the accident, including one of our Flight Medics who was apparently injured as well. All this reported in the local paper (Stuart, that is).

What a shame. The person killed was a good guy, one of the FD’s Batallion Chiefs; someone who had grown up in and with the Department and was very well known. The Flight Medic was flown to the trauma center by a neighboring program. All in all, I can’t imagine what that call was like.

Thoughts and prayers are with the families directly affected by the tragedy, and also with the Fire Rescue family. If you’ve not seen or been a part of it, I don’t know of a more tight group of people who work and play together, help each other or who watch out for each other like Firefighters. When one hurts in a department they all hurt; I’m sure there’s plenty of that going on right now while people struggle to process what happened, understand it, and then wrestle with the “why” of it all.

So sad. A young life cut short, and many others affected.

Wishing I was home to comfort my friends…