John Palmer has retired.
Camera IconJohn Palmer has retired. Credit: Supplied/Supplied

Firefighter wants to smell the roses

Lauren Pilat, North Coast TimersNorth Coast Times

The 66-year-old has been in the industry since 1974 and in that time worked at stations around Perth before joining the Malaga team in 2002.

As an award-winning firefighter, Mr Palmer said he really enjoyed serving the community and got a lot of satisfaction out of it over the years.

He said he would miss working with a great team but would not miss having to go to unpleasant jobs such as fatalities.

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‘It’s very rare we get through a shift without going to a road accident of some sort,’ he said.

‘We were very unlucky, we were called to the incident where the young boy (Dorine Prince) was killed in Nollamara.

‘We had another one a fortnight before that on Wanneroo Road in Nollamara ” three were killed in that car. Malaga’s had some very bad accidents ” we have had two incidents where there were five fatalities in one accident.’

The former army officer said going out to jobs where there had been a fatality was hard, but he had to acclimatise himself to handle them.

Now, putting those days of being called out to the unknown behind him, Mr Palmer said he had come to the point in life where he wanted to enjoy himself without stresses of work.

‘I just want to sit back and smell the roses now and have a bit of fun before the time passes when I’m not going to be active enough to do so,’ he said.