Yesterday started like most days when I get off work in the morning. I stopped at Starbucks, got home and began my daily routine checking email, blogs and websites.

While I was doing that I noticed a wide variety of birds in the yard. So I set out to photograph them for today's post. A few minutes into that My plans changed a bit.

I heard York City Fire being dispatched to a structure fire. The first engine got on the scene very quickly and reported smoke showing from the 2nd and 3rd floors. So I quickly jumped in my truck and headed out.

Enroute you could hear things were getting a bit more involved. A report of an infant trapped, trouble locating the seat of the fire, increasing volumes of smoke all made for an incident that seemed to be growing in size and complexity.

I arrived and found crews heavily involved in the firefight. But things had changed, the fire had been located, the smoke was decreasing and it was determined that no one was home when the fire began.

And then it happened. First one firefighter comes out complaining of some injuries, but it is not clear what had happened. And then suddenly a second firefighter is drug out by his fellow crew members.

They had been on the second floor when it suddenly collapsed beneath them sending them crashing to the floor below. Firefighters and EMS personnel quickly sprang into action stabilizing and treating the firefighter.

Initially I began shooting as the drama unfolded. Then I felt strange in doing so as I was realizing who was being drug out. A long time friend and brother of a Lieutenant that I work with lie in the street before me obviously injured and in a great deal of pain. I shot just a few more images and as fate would have it my battery died ending the dilemma brewing in my mind as to whether or not I should still be shooting images.

The potential consequences of what we do always lives somewhere in your mind but is normally suppressed only to rear its head during times like this. To see a brother injured or in trouble anywhere is terrible but to see those you know makes it even worse.

Fortunately today's events turned out OK. The brothers will be fine, although a little worse for the wear. One has been released from the hospital and the other kept for some additional observation.

On another note the fire may have been started by an unattended candle used for lighting as the electricity had been recently shut off. It wasn't a week ago where similar circumstances took the lives of two small children and critically burned a third in a town not far from here. Sad, on so many levels...