It was 8 a.m. on a Friday morning in 2021 when Bret Storck first saw the car that was perpendicular to the road. He knew something wasn’t right, so he pulled his car over to see if he could help. In seconds, his firefighter training kicked in, and he was at the driver’s door trying to communicate with an unresponsive woman. Then, he caught a whiff of smoke.
“Car fires can blaze quickly,” said Storck, a Collin College Fire Science Academy instructor and Dallas Fire Department captain. “I knew it would get bad. I unbuckled the seatbelt and pulled her out of the car onto the grass into a safe location.”
Right time, right place
Steve Cruz, Collin College fire instructor and captain of Station 5 in Frisco, and his fire company responded to the call.
“The car was ‘fully involved,’ which means it was blazing,” said Cruz, who graduated from the Collin College Fire Officer program in the late ’90s. “There was no wind, so the smoke and flames were going straight up. The flames were four feet high, and you could see smoke from a half-mile away. The only way she was able to get out is that he physically took her out. He saved her.”
According to Cruz, his firefighters were prepared and dressed in the appropriate gear when they arrived on the scene because Storck was relaying information about the unresponsive individual and the vehicle fire.
“I was relieved that Captain Cruz showed up,” said Storck, who teaches a hazardous materials response class at the college. “He’s smart, and I teach with him.”
“Being a firefighter is not a job just anyone can do,” said Pat McAuliff, Collin College director of Fire Science and chief training officer. “You need people who are passionate about it, and clearly these two are. I am enormously proud of them. Collin College’s Fire Science program is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and I believe the strength of our program comes from our instructors who are from a wide variety of different agencies in the area. But all of them have the common thread as firefighters who help others on or off duty. It is part of their DNA.”
Teaching the next generation
Storck explains that when firefighters are at the scene of an accident, they react in the way they were trained. He calls it muscle memory.
“That same repetition is helpful for students,” he said. “We go over motor vehicle collision (MVC) at the college. We teach students how to do things safely, how to approach a car from the side, how to pull people out and get them out of the situation.”
That fateful Friday was Storck’s day off. If you ask him why he stopped he’ll explain, “That’s what I do.” The reality is that it is also who he is – a firefighter who wants to help people, make split-second decisions that save lives, and teach the next generation who will follow in his footsteps.
“I decided to teach to become a better firefighter and officer,” Storck said. “I have the opportunity to work in a high-tech facility and learn from firefighters who work in big and small cities and everything in between. That is the best thing for me, the students, and our community.”
For more information about the Fire Science Academy, visit www.collin.edu/firescience/.