Firefighters are a special sort of hero

Blaring sirens, flashing lights, big red trucks. What little boy -- or girl -- wouldn't want to be part of that? Helmets, fire suits, boots, axes and hoses, all deployed at breakneck speed in an effort to safe life and property.

We've seen too many house fires around McCook recently, with families displaced just as the holiday season is upon us. It's a good reminder of the need to take precautions with Christmas lighting, cooking and space heaters, as well as making sure furnaces are operating correctly, fireplace chimneys are clean and hot ashes don't wind up near combustible material.

It takes someone special to be a firefighter, especially volunteers who roll out of a warm bed on a sub-zero winter night to man a hose on an icy street or don breathing gear to enter a burning building.

If you want more proof, check out the Nebraska State Patrol helicopter video of Norfolk firefighters battling a fire near a tank full of 30,000 gallons of propane:

The tank looked like nothing less than a rocket laying on a horizontal launch pad, ready to take off.

It had recently been filled, apparently in anticipation of the reopening of a nearby dairy-products manufacturing plant.

Amazingly, with everyone within a mile of the scene evacuated, the firefighters were able to approach the burning tank, shut off the gas and extinguish the blaze.

"'You guys are trained for this, we've done this before,'" Norfolk Fire Chief Shane Weidner told a local television station. "'It's a propane scenario ... we train for that. Go out there, be safe, shut the valves and Godspeed.' And they said 'Hooah, we'll get 'er done, Chief.'"

Not only did they risk their lives to prevent an explosion, they saved the plant and the valuable jobs the new company is bringing to their community.

Are firefighters someone young people should emulate?

They could do a lot worse.