07/13/2026
Some calls stay with you because of what happened. Some stay with you because of who was there.
Today is both.
We keep waiting for this to settle into something we can understand, and it isn’t happening. That’s how we know it’s real, the losses that make sense don’t feel like this.
We lost three people this weekend. Two of our own, and one more who never had to wear the uniform to be part of this family.
Our hearts are with the Wabasha Fire Department, and with every family, friend, neighbor, and person who loved them. This isn’t a loss that stays inside one department. In a community this size, it touches all of us.
We don’t have the right words, so we won’t pretend to. What we have instead is this: we’ll carry them into every call we answer, every time we pull into a station, and every time we think of the people who are no longer standing where they should be.
That absence doesn’t go away. It just becomes part of how we do the job.
