Lupe Hermosillo Is Responder Of The Week

news1@ulyssesnews.com

This week’s Responder of the Week is a Grant County firefighter who has been giving back to the community as a first responder for many years. Guadalupe “Lupe” Hermosillo was nominated for this week’s honor by his wife, Claudia Hermosillo, and has been fighting fires across the region for seven years.

Born in Mexico, Lupe moved to Ulysses at the age of 4 and has been here ever since, graduating from Ulysses High School. He said he isn’t sure why he became a firefighter.

“That’s a good question because I don’t really even know,” Hermosillo said. “I always admired what firefighters did, what first responders did, in general.”

Hermosillo said he always thought about it, wondering if he had the time. Finally, his wife Claudia said if you want to do it, just do it. But at the time, he didn’t know any firefighters, so he just went to a random meeting.

“And found out that a couple of my friends were firefighters,” he said. “After that, it’s just history. It’s just one thing I’ve always wanted to do.”

Most of the Grant County firefighters are volunteers with regular day jobs – Lupe works at American Implement – and training is “technically” not needed.

“But they do encourage training, so we do in-house training,” Lupe said. “All the firefighters that don’t have any training, we help them with fire suppressant and extrication. We do have our own in-house trainings but we also have (University of Kansas) or we go to Garden City and we can go to training through them.”

Lupe has Firefighter 1 training, Hazmat training, and wild land training, which the state comes and does at the fire station here.

And as a John Deere technician at American Implement, Lupe said his employer is understanding whenever he needs to respond to a fire.

“We always have our radios with us, and when the tones drop, if you’re able, then you respond,” he said. “I talked to the CEO of American Implement and his response was ‘Just don’t speed in a company truck.’

“American Implement is very fond of firefighters, first responders in general. I’m very happy that I work for a company that lets me do that.”

Lupe said there are plenty of good and bad things that come with being a firefighter.

“You see everything,” he said, adding that being inside a fully engulfed building is like “the depths of Satan.”

“You feel the fire on you even though all our gear is up to 1,300 degrees that you can be in safely, you’ll feel it in your feet, in your ears,” he said. “But seeing the fire all around you, it was pretty cool.”

A recent accident during a dust storm was one of the worst he’s responded to. There were several casualties.

“There’s always (things) like that, that makes you always try to keep focused,” he said. “Anything can go wrong.”

Grant County firefighters have been busy this spring with fires in Ulysses and Lakin.

“The Lakin fire was pretty cool because it’s different terrain,” he said. “There was valleys and there was ditches, navigating through all that in the smoke, that was pretty cool, too.”.

Each emergency responsder who is selected as Responder of the Week is in the running for Responder of the Month every month, and each Responder of the Month is then eligible for Responder of the Year. Winners are picked randomly from all the current nominees via a digital application to be Responder of the Month.

If you would like to nominate someone for this honor please submit your nomination to news2@ulyssesnews.com. Nominees can be law enforcement officers, 911 dispatchers, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, military personnel, public health professionals and utility line workers.If you would like to be a part of this program contact the Ulysses News at news2@ulyssesnews.com or call 620-356-1201.

The Responder of the Month program is to show our appreciation for the job they do each and every day.