St. Paul Firefighter Recalls Incidents, Time Behind the Lens

Boxes and boxes full of photo negatives fill the St. Paul Fire Department's archives, and each tells a story.

Paul Barrett has spent years going through them. He has found out more about the history of the place he's loved to work and shared the images with others.

On his days off from being a firefighter, Barrett responded to blazes in St. Paul with camera in hand. He rarely misses a fire, going to them around the clock to photograph fellow firefighters -- documenting their work now and for generations to come.

Barrett became part of the fire department's history himself Friday, retiring after 34 1/2 years of service. He was the firefighter with the second-most seniority in the department.

For Fire Chief Tim Butler, Barrett has been an iconic firefighter.

"He represents the heart and soul of who we are as a fire department," Butler said. If you were lost in a fire, Barrett would be the firefighter you'd want searching for you because he'd never give up, Butler said.

Beyond that, the fire chief said Barrett served as a great historian of the department and his legacy will live on.

Barrett, born and raised in St. Paul, still lives in the city. He's always resided in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood.

"Like most little kids, I was interested in fire trucks and firemen," he said. When Barrett graduated from Cretin High School in 1977 (before it merged to become Cretin-Derham Hall), "all my buddies were going to college and I thought, 'I'm not really interested in that.' "

When Barrett was in high school, St. Paul firefighter Dick Sarafolean lived about a block and a half away. Sarafolean, who retired in 1997, remembers the youngster asking every time he saw him when the department would be hiring.

"I knew he was a natural," Sarafolean said. "He was a very giving and kind individual. He's always done his share times two."

Barrett joined the fire department in 1980 and has been a captain since 1994. He was assigned to Station 8 downtown, now at 10th and Minnesota streets, since 2001.

The firefighters there respond all over the city because of the station's proximity to Interstates 35E and 94, but their primary service area is downtown, the West Side, the Cathedral Hill area and north of the Capitol.

Barrett became a firefighter at age 21. He dealt with people who had died by suicide, families who lost their homes to fires, children who had drowned.

"When you're new, you work with old guys who've been through it, and they teach you how to cope with things," Barrett said. Often, that happens back at the fire station, where fellow firefighters talk with each other about what they've encountered, he said. St. Paul firefighters work 24-hour shifts, eating and sleeping at their stations.

Barrett also leaned on his Catholic faith. "I believe there's life after this, and that gives me hope after I see tragedies," he said. They also were reminders to Barrett of how fortunate he was to have a good life, with his wife and three children.

Barrett received the fire department's highest honor after he and another fire captain who responded to a North End blaze in 2005 searched through heavy smoke, found an unconscious man on the third floor and carried him to safety.

He helped during some of the St. Paul's biggest disasters.

Barrett and his crew were first to arrive when a landslide buried children on a field trip in Lilydale Regional Park in 2013. Those firefighters dug at first with their bare hands, pulling out one child who survived and another who had died.

In 1993, when a crew severed a natural gas line at Third Street and Maria Avenue, Barrett and firefighters heard the explosion from the Payne Avenue fire station off East Seventh Street. Three people were killed and about a dozen injured.

Barrett's crew was the first to arrive. "It kind of looked like what you would see in a movie," Barrett said. Debris was everywhere, a two-story building was on fire and had partially collapsed, some people were running and others were lying in the street.

A passing car had been crushed, and Barrett and other firefighters found a husband and wife in their 70s trapped inside. The man had already died, but they were able to get the woman out of the car.

The year before, Barrett and other firefighters had been first at the scene when two small airplanes collided over Interstate 94 and fell from the sky, killing all four people aboard.

'BLESSED WITH THE PERFECT JOB'

Barrett said he discovered his love for history at the St. Paul Fire Department and "kind of by default, I've turned into the department historian."

It started when he was a young firefighter and there were still firefighters on the job who had started in the 1940s. He'd listen to their stories and wanted to know more. The more he found out, the more interested he became.

Barrett started going through the fire department's archives, unearthing old photos and boxes upon boxes of negatives. His favorite part: finding photos of retired firefighters and sending copies to them or their widows. Often, they would be pictures they had never seen and were delighted to receive, Barrett said.

He's been looking through 50 years of negatives over the past decade, and has more boxes left. Some photos he found were enlarged to hang in the lobby of fire department headquarters when they got a new building. Barrett also did major photographic research for a history book of the fire department that covered more than 100 years.

Fellow firefighters elected Barrett to be editor of their union newspaper about 15 years ago, and he has used the opportunity to share the photos he takes of his colleagues at fire scenes and community events. He also helped create a recently published yearbook that documented major fire events in St. Paul during the previous 20 years.

Now that he's leaving the fire department, Barrett said he'll miss the reward of helping people in emergencies and the camaraderie of life at a fire station, but he'll also be glad to get some regular sleep. In recent years, as he's grown older, Barrett, 56, said he has realized the toll that sleep deprivation takes -- at his station, firefighters might be woken up two to four times a night to respond to calls, Barrett said.

Barrett said he'll stay involved with researching the fire department's history and photographing St. Paul fires as they occur. He also plans to spend more time with his wife of 34 years, Nancy, their children and seven grandchildren. The youngsters showed up at Barrett's retirement party Friday wearing custom T-shirts that read, "Engine 8," Barrett's rig, and "Papa's Crew."

Barrett is so well-loved by current and former members of the department that firefighters at his station prepared for a large turnout for the party: They made 40 pounds of spaghetti and 300 meatballs.

"I've been blessed with the perfect job," Barrett said. "It was a childhood dream and I've been able to live it."

Mara H. Gottfried can be reached at 651-228-5262. Follow her at twitter.com/MaraGottfried.

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