TEXT II

The most decorated firefighter in FDNY history

By Xavier Jackson 

From the 1970s through the 1990s, there were thousands of fires raging across New York City. And all those fires had one thing in common: they were likely to have faced the likes of Jack Pritchard, the most decorated firefighter in New York City history.

From the beginning, Pritchard had proven himself a worthy member of the team, although his commanding officer was reportedly getting worried about his “near suicidal” tendencies when battling fires. For example, he found himself at the fire of a three-story building with a mentally-challenged child trapped on the third floor. He quickly charged in without oxygen and found the child, before he realized he was trapped. Left with no other exit — and by this point actually on fire himself — Pritchard smothered the child, and leaped to the first floor where he was doused with water and shipped off to the burn ward with the boy.

Pritchard’s next large inferno would be several years later, when he found himself rescuing fellow firefighters from a fire at Waldbaum’s Supermarket in Brooklyn. It was a fire he didn’t even have to go to, since his shift had actually already ended. But that wasn’t going to stop him.

It didn’t take long for him to distinguish himself again. On March 27, 1992, Engine 255 arrived at a fire to find an injured firefighter being pulled from the building after unsuccessfully attempting to rescue a 70-year-old man. Impatient and realizing he didn’t have to wait for orders as he was already in charge, Pritchard charged into the inferno, safety equipment be damned. He found the man, on fire, in his bed. Not hesitating, Pritchard extinguished the flames himself and dragged him out of the building.

He spent the next two months recovering from his burns in the hospital.

Then in July of 1998, Engine 255 pulled up to a fire where Jack Pritchard would perform the most famous heroics of his career. After learning there was an infant trapped in a crib on the fourth floor, Pritchard entered his Supermanmode and fearlessly leaped into the building to locate the baby. 

After taking flames directly to his unprotected face, Pritchard located the baby, still alive. Unfortunately, flames were leaping above the crib, preventing him from lifting the baby to safety. Using his un-gloved hands — because safety was a word that still didn’t exist in his vocabulary — Pritchard grabbed the melting crib and began dragging it out of the room. Breathing carbon monoxide and severely burning his hand the whole way, Pritchard dragged the crib to his fellow firefighters where they assisted in rescuing the infant. For this he was awarded his second Bennett medal — the first was for the Walbaum’s fire — the highest award possible in the FDNY. 

He finally retired from the department in 1999 with the rank of Battalion Chief, ending his career by simply stating “It’s been a real honor to be a firefighter.”

Available at: <https://www.firerescue1.com/fdny/

articles/the-most-decorated-firefighter-in-fdny-history-

jed6X9Qw0PqRnEbF/>. Accessed on: August 13, 2020

(Adapted). 

TEXT I

Top stories of 2019 | No. 1: Hero firefighter mourned

BERWICK, Maine — Firefighters and residents in Berwick and surrounding communities felt a deep sense of loss after the death of Fire Capt. Joel Barnes, who died shielding a fellow firefighter from flames during threestory apartment building fire March 1.

Barnes, 32, was hailed as a hero at his funeral for giving up his life to save his comrade.

The fire also displaced eight tenants in six apartment units. No tenants were injured. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a federal agency responsible for conducting research and making recommendations for the prevention of work-related injury and illness, ruled the building needed to be demolished. The institute inspects buildings whenever a firefighter is killed in the line of duty, according to Berwick Town Manager Stephen Eldridge. 

Barnes had no chance to escape from the third floor of the 10 Bell St. apartment building fire, leading to his death from “probable hyperthermia and/or hypoxia,” according to a report released April 5. Dr. Christine James of the New Hampshire chief medical examiner’s office determined the cause of death and ruled the manner of death was accidental. Hyperthermia is defined as the condition of having a body temperature greatly above normal, while hypoxia is a condition in which the body or a region of the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply at the tissue level.

Available at: <https://www.fosters.com/news/20191230/top-

stories-of-2019--no-1-hero-firefighter-mourned>.

Accessed on: August 11, 2020 (Adapted). 

TEXT I

Top stories of 2019 | No. 1: Hero firefighter mourned

BERWICK, Maine — Firefighters and residents in Berwick and surrounding communities felt a deep sense of loss after the death of Fire Capt. Joel Barnes, who died shielding a fellow firefighter from flames during threestory apartment building fire March 1.

Barnes, 32, was hailed as a hero at his funeral for giving up his life to save his comrade.

The fire also displaced eight tenants in six apartment units. No tenants were injured. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a federal agency responsible for conducting research and making recommendations for the prevention of work-related injury and illness, ruled the building needed to be demolished. The institute inspects buildings whenever a firefighter is killed in the line of duty, according to Berwick Town Manager Stephen Eldridge. 

Barnes had no chance to escape from the third floor of the 10 Bell St. apartment building fire, leading to his death from “probable hyperthermia and/or hypoxia,” according to a report released April 5. Dr. Christine James of the New Hampshire chief medical examiner’s office determined the cause of death and ruled the manner of death was accidental. Hyperthermia is defined as the condition of having a body temperature greatly above normal, while hypoxia is a condition in which the body or a region of the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply at the tissue level.

Available at: <https://www.fosters.com/news/20191230/top-

stories-of-2019--no-1-hero-firefighter-mourned>.

Accessed on: August 11, 2020 (Adapted). 

A questão refere-se ao texto destacado a seguir.

When my family first moved to North Carolina, we lived in a rented house three blocks from the school where I would begin the third grade. My mother made friends with one of the neighbors, but one seemed enough for her. Within a year we would move again and, as she explained, there wasn’t much point in getting too close to people we would have to say good-bye to. Our next house was less than a mile away, and the short journey would hardly merit tears or even goodbyes, for that matter. It was more of a “see you later” situation, but still I adopted my mother’s attitude, as it allowed me to pretend that not making friends was a conscious choice. I could if I wanted to. It just wasn’t the right time.

Back in New York State, we had lived in the country, with no sidewalks or streetlights; you could leave the house and still be alone. But here, when you looked out the window, you saw other houses, and people inside those houses. I hoped that in walking around after dark I might witness a murder, but for the most part our neighbors just sat in their living rooms, watching TV. The only place that seemed truly different was owned by a man named Mr. Tomkey, who did not believe in television […].  

To say that you did not believe in television was different from saying that you did not care for it. Belief implied that television had a master plan and that you were against it. It also suggested that you thought too much. When my mother reported that Mr. Tomkey did not believe in television, my father said, “Well, good for him. I don't know that I believe in it, either”.

“That's exactly how I feel,” my mother said, and then my parents watched the news, and whatever came on after the news.

SEDARIS, David. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Recurso eletrônico. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2004, p. 5. 

A questão refere-se ao texto destacado a seguir.

When my family first moved to North Carolina, we lived in a rented house three blocks from the school where I would begin the third grade. My mother made friends with one of the neighbors, but one seemed enough for her. Within a year we would move again and, as she explained, there wasn’t much point in getting too close to people we would have to say good-bye to. Our next house was less than a mile away, and the short journey would hardly merit tears or even goodbyes, for that matter. It was more of a “see you later” situation, but still I adopted my mother’s attitude, as it allowed me to pretend that not making friends was a conscious choice. I could if I wanted to. It just wasn’t the right time.

Back in New York State, we had lived in the country, with no sidewalks or streetlights; you could leave the house and still be alone. But here, when you looked out the window, you saw other houses, and people inside those houses. I hoped that in walking around after dark I might witness a murder, but for the most part our neighbors just sat in their living rooms, watching TV. The only place that seemed truly different was owned by a man named Mr. Tomkey, who did not believe in television […].  

To say that you did not believe in television was different from saying that you did not care for it. Belief implied that television had a master plan and that you were against it. It also suggested that you thought too much. When my mother reported that Mr. Tomkey did not believe in television, my father said, “Well, good for him. I don't know that I believe in it, either”.

“That's exactly how I feel,” my mother said, and then my parents watched the news, and whatever came on after the news.

SEDARIS, David. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Recurso eletrônico. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2004, p. 5. 

A questão refere-se ao texto destacado a seguir.

When my family first moved to North Carolina, we lived in a rented house three blocks from the school where I would begin the third grade. My mother made friends with one of the neighbors, but one seemed enough for her. Within a year we would move again and, as she explained, there wasn’t much point in getting too close to people we would have to say good-bye to. Our next house was less than a mile away, and the short journey would hardly merit tears or even goodbyes, for that matter. It was more of a “see you later” situation, but still I adopted my mother’s attitude, as it allowed me to pretend that not making friends was a conscious choice. I could if I wanted to. It just wasn’t the right time.

Back in New York State, we had lived in the country, with no sidewalks or streetlights; you could leave the house and still be alone. But here, when you looked out the window, you saw other houses, and people inside those houses. I hoped that in walking around after dark I might witness a murder, but for the most part our neighbors just sat in their living rooms, watching TV. The only place that seemed truly different was owned by a man named Mr. Tomkey, who did not believe in television […].  

To say that you did not believe in television was different from saying that you did not care for it. Belief implied that television had a master plan and that you were against it. It also suggested that you thought too much. When my mother reported that Mr. Tomkey did not believe in television, my father said, “Well, good for him. I don't know that I believe in it, either”.

“That's exactly how I feel,” my mother said, and then my parents watched the news, and whatever came on after the news.

SEDARIS, David. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Recurso eletrônico. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2004, p. 5. 

A questão refere-se ao texto destacado a seguir.

It is the standing reproach of a democratic society that it is the purgatory of genius and the paradise of mediocrity. With ourselves it has become notorious that when a man is so unfortunate as to exhibit uncommon abilities, he usually renders himself ineligible for political honors or distinctions. It would seem that the community is possessed with that groveling quality of a sordid mind which hates superiority, and would ostracize genius, as the Athenians did Aristides. One might believe it would not be unpleasing to the popular taste if some enterprising person could invent a machine for stunting intellectual development, after the fashion of idiotic barbarians who flatten the heads of their children. The masses of the community certainly appear to believe that political equality implies not only social, but should also imply intellectual equality, under pain of being severely frowned down by an outraged public opinion. 

The prevalent sentiment manifests itself in many different ways. It finds expression in public conveyances and resorts and is not altogether unknown even to the pulpit. It is found to perfection in the speeches of demagogues, who feel certain they are never so successful as when their audience is satisfied that the intellect of the speaker is of no higher an order than that of the lowest intelligence among them. Worse than all, it is demonstrated in the election of public officers of nearly all grades up to the highest: of which latter it has now become quite the custom to assume that it is impossible for a man of first-rate powers to be made President of the United States. 

The causes which lend to so singular a state of affairs are of an intricate and complex character. At the outset, it is difficult to realize the possibility of a system, the logical deduction from which appears to be that, if a man would rise in life, he must assiduously belittle his understanding. Perhaps it would be fairer to modify the proposition so far as to concede that ability is as useful here as elsewhere, provided the owner has the tact not to affront the sensibilities of the people by showing too much of it. No doubt a vague apprehension exists in the popular mind that shining talents are dangerous when intrusted with executive power in a republic: yet, it were a poor commentary on our institutions to intimate that, under them, for a man to be clever he must also be vicious. Experience rather teaches the contrary. If the diffusion of education, having the general tendency to elevate the understanding, is to produce more bad men than good, we had better abandon than foster our Common School system. Manifestly, we must look further for the solution of our enigma[:] that minds of moderate calibre ordinarily condemn everything which is beyond their range. 

THE NEW YORK TIMES. The worship of mediocrity. 17/08/1862. Disponível em: https://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/17/archives/the-worship-of-mediocrity.html. Acesso 20/08/2020.

A questão refere-se ao texto destacado a seguir.

It is the standing reproach of a democratic society that it is the purgatory of genius and the paradise of mediocrity. With ourselves it has become notorious that when a man is so unfortunate as to exhibit uncommon abilities, he usually renders himself ineligible for political honors or distinctions. It would seem that the community is possessed with that groveling quality of a sordid mind which hates superiority, and would ostracize genius, as the Athenians did Aristides. One might believe it would not be unpleasing to the popular taste if some enterprising person could invent a machine for stunting intellectual development, after the fashion of idiotic barbarians who flatten the heads of their children. The masses of the community certainly appear to believe that political equality implies not only social, but should also imply intellectual equality, under pain of being severely frowned down by an outraged public opinion. 

The prevalent sentiment manifests itself in many different ways. It finds expression in public conveyances and resorts and is not altogether unknown even to the pulpit. It is found to perfection in the speeches of demagogues, who feel certain they are never so successful as when their audience is satisfied that the intellect of the speaker is of no higher an order than that of the lowest intelligence among them. Worse than all, it is demonstrated in the election of public officers of nearly all grades up to the highest: of which latter it has now become quite the custom to assume that it is impossible for a man of first-rate powers to be made President of the United States. 

The causes which lend to so singular a state of affairs are of an intricate and complex character. At the outset, it is difficult to realize the possibility of a system, the logical deduction from which appears to be that, if a man would rise in life, he must assiduously belittle his understanding. Perhaps it would be fairer to modify the proposition so far as to concede that ability is as useful here as elsewhere, provided the owner has the tact not to affront the sensibilities of the people by showing too much of it. No doubt a vague apprehension exists in the popular mind that shining talents are dangerous when intrusted with executive power in a republic: yet, it were a poor commentary on our institutions to intimate that, under them, for a man to be clever he must also be vicious. Experience rather teaches the contrary. If the diffusion of education, having the general tendency to elevate the understanding, is to produce more bad men than good, we had better abandon than foster our Common School system. Manifestly, we must look further for the solution of our enigma[:] that minds of moderate calibre ordinarily condemn everything which is beyond their range. 

THE NEW YORK TIMES. The worship of mediocrity. 17/08/1862. Disponível em: https://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/17/archives/the-worship-of-mediocrity.html. Acesso 20/08/2020.