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June 12, 2019 - Sean Hannity Show
23:10
On The Job Podcast: Tiny Yet Fierce
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Welcome to On the Job.
This season we're bringing you stories about people finding their professional stride by virtue of who they know.
Whether it's breathing new life into an age-old profession, taking the reins in a family business, forging your own path with a new idea, or landing the perfect job doing something you'd never before even considered.
Today for On the Job, producer Otis Gray travels to Southampton, Massachusetts to interview Anna Nadler.
Anna is a rambunctious young woman working not one but two jobs that by looking at her, you might not see her doing.
She's five foot two, she's bubbly, and on most days is vastly outnumbered by male co-workers.
While her job choices might seem at first glance non-traditional, she's in no way out of place in either.
Anna Nadler is 27.
She's a civil engineer living in Southampton, Mass.
And right now, it's the middle of the night.
She's gonna have to wake up at 6 a.m.
She and her crew have a big job replacing a bridge a couple towns over.
Somewhere around 2:30 a.m., she hears this come out of a radio that she is charging on her kitchen table.
*music*
That's the fire department.
And the code is for a structure fire, a big one.
So Anna leaps out of bed and she responds.
Seconds later, she is dressed and running to the car.
Just got honed out for a structure fire mutual aid to East Hampton running out the door now.
Right now it's February.
There's snow on the ground, there's lots of ice.
It's about 15 degrees outside.
You get these calls and your heart is racing because you're so amped up.
Structure fires do not come around every day.
But for the last two years, Anna has been an on-call firefighter here in Southampton.
She's not your typical firefighter or a typical person you'd see on a roadside construction crew.
She's short, she's about 5'2.
She actually describes herself as fun-sized.
Regardless, she says she's usually the first at the station when there's a call.
The other guys, they need to get up, go to the bathroom.
It sounds terrible to say, but I'm super excited because I love fighting fires.
Like, it's just, I'm so passionate about it, but it's terrible at the same time because this means someone's property is on fire.
Garage, barn, you don't know, but that's on fire, so we're about to see what it actually is, but I am here.
Stay tuned for an update.
So today, we follow Anna Nadler as she juggles her life as an engineer, her love for running into burning buildings, and being an unexpected person to do both.
Thank you.
Thank you.
An update for you now on a house fire in East Hampton that we told you about on 20th News this morning, according to East Hampton Fire Chief David Motter.
Everyone made it out safely.
Three firefighters though had minor injuries, and one had to be taken to the hospital with neck and shoulder injuries after part of the home's ceiling collapsed on top of it.
What you're hearing now is from a local news report on the fire that Anna just responded to.
And before you get worried, she did not get hurt.
Everyone was okay.
One of the other firefighters she knew at the scene was transported to the hospital, but was totally okay shortly after.
It was an old home that caught fire quick.
Anna was inside fighting the fire and then on the roof ripping off siding so that the fire didn't spread.
I asked her when she was a kid if she ever imagined her future self on top of a smoldering building at three in the morning.
Oh god, no.
I don't know how I got here.
I do and I don't.
When I was a little girl, there were two things I wanted to do in my life.
I wanted to paint houses with polka dots.
I painted houses in the summers, and I loved it.
Like I think paint painting's really relaxing.
I never got to do the polka dots, but you know, I got past that, but definitely not what I want to do 40 hours a week.
And I wanted to be a firefighter.
She says it started when she was really young.
She had a deep infatuation with fire trucks.
I remember whenever you can ask my mother about this or my siblings.
Whenever I heard sirens, I sprinted to the window to watch if and like prayed that they would go by on our street.
I loved fire trucks, and I didn't really necessarily see me putting on gear and going to a call, but just something I was always really curious about.
As far as gear goes, Anna is proud to say that she has the smallest boots ever worn at the station.
Anna's always smiling.
She's got pale blue eyes, dark hair, and she's always been little.
And growing up, that was a big part of her identity, especially at the Catholic school she went to in southern Vermont.
I remember being picked on because I was little a lot.
Like girls were pissed that I could fit into like smaller size clothes, and I'm like, listen, I fit in kids' size, like I'm not even in the teens section yet, so you really shouldn't be picking on me.
She also very plainly describes her younger self as a nerd.
Well, I had glasses, and then I had braces, and I definitely had some ugly bangs for a while, so definitely a nerd.
I was very, very quiet, so I just was kind of hiding in the corner, didn't know what to do.
I was a hot ticket.
And now I wear a hard hat.
Just like she couldn't really imagine being an actual firefighter when she was young, she really never saw herself in a hard hat with command over construction sites, repairing roads and demolishing bridges.
I honestly kind of accidentally made my way into engineering because Mr. Hodgkin from high school, shout out to him.
He convinced me to take AP physics, and I'm like, I know a little bit about physics, but like I don't know.
I took it and I like will wave my nerd flag hardcore right now.
I'm s I was fascinated that I could throw a ball in the air and figure out like when it was gonna come down and where, like that was so cool to me.
When she got to college at the University of Vermont, an advisor saw her love for physics and convinced her to go into engineering.
She was really drawn to civil engineering, especially the transportation aspect.
So she did a rotating fellowship down here in Southampton to try all the different jobs at the field entails.
You know, it was I was stuck behind a desk a lot of it, and then finally construction came along, and I was on Interstate 91, and I was like just in love.
It was amazing.
I loved going into work.
I loved seeing the job, I loved watching it progress.
So when that rotation finished, she chose to go into the construction side of engineering full-time, and she moved here to Southampton.
The day I was with her, she brought me over to her current project.
She's wearing a hard hat, a white one, which is generally the color that engineers wear.
She's got a neon vest on, and we're walking on an aging bridge that they're preparing to demolish so that they can put in a new one.
Wow.
Mm-hmm.
out with the old and with the new.
It was the first time that I really thought about everything that goes into a job like that.
Diverting traffic alone for months on end seems like a daunting task, and it's just one of many.
Utility relocation, we gotta do the gas main, move that.
We're gonna start demoing the bridge itself.
Then we'll rebuild that portion of the bridge.
Flip-flop, demo the other half, rebuild that half, so then the bridge itself will be complete.
There were a lot of trees that needed to be cleared.
They're gonna have to redo all the roads around the bridges completely to reach quality standards.
They have to put totally new traffic signals in both intersections.
The list goes on and on.
A little bit of everything on this job.
Mm-hmm.
I think a lot of people get frustrated seeing those big orange signs that say construction zone ahead.
It means delays and where you need to go.
Or you just go by not thinking much at all about what they're doing there.
Anna is fine with that.
She's actually got a pretty romantic view on what she does.
It's infectious.
I kind of say a construction job is kind of like a baby.
Not that I have kids, but I would imagine.
And it's like you just see it, and you see it from the beginning before it's even a thing.
You see it when it's just paper.
And you want to grow up to be a big, beautiful job.
So, you know, then when it's done, you're like, you drive by it.
No one else thinks about it.
You know, if it saves five minutes off their trip a day, like that's awesome.
And you can look at it and be like, yeah, I was a part of that.
Like that.
That's my baby.
That's my baby.
While we're talking, Anna is the only woman on the job site.
I guess the guys there are your stereotypical construction workers.
Men, probably between 20 and 50 years old.
Everyone she talks to here clearly has a deep respect for her.
Are you having fun out here?
But who she is is something that she has to deal with as she meets new people all the time for this job.
People that don't know me often think that I'm here as an intern, or people will ask if I'm at work with my father.
Um, I get that a lot just because I guess I look young.
But to me, it's just going to work like everyone else does.
I go to work and I do my job.
What does it matter what I look like or if I'm a girl or a boy?
You get someone like Anna in here, it kind of changes that stereotype you have of an engineer.
This is Anna's boss.
Jim Hoy, I'm the assistant construction engineer for District 2.
Jim says if people underestimate her, it really doesn't last long.
She's one of the more knowledgeable people he's worked with, and she's contagiously happy in the workplace.
Yeah, she she definitely livens up your day.
Stealing it from the old orange juice commercial, you know, at a day without Anna is like a day without sunshine, you know.
He says he was originally worried that she would be too nice and would have trouble holding contractors to their agreements, which is a big part of the job.
But he found out pretty quick that she has no problem laying down the law.
Definitely.
She does it in a way that uh you don't even know she's getting what she wants.
She's around her somewhere.
There she is.
We're walking back to the car, and someone Anna knows is yelling to her from the other side of the job site.
It's a local police sergeant who looks over the construction crews around here.
He and Anna work together a lot.
I asked him to tell me what he thought of Anna.
Tough as they come, smart, and she'll call you out when you're not doing your job.
That's who Anna is.
She ever call you out?
No, because I'm always doing my job.
Couldn't have enough good things to say about her.
And then he said that she just made him a nice cap.
What do you mean she made you a nice cap?
She made me a nice uh thin blue line of police cap.
Like she knit it?
She knit it.
Yeah, she kits too.
She needs you a half.
She's an engineer, she knits, she's a firefighter, she does it all.
What else?
What else can you ask for in a woman?
A woman!
One day in 2017, Anna was parking her car for work at the fire department, which was close by to the job site she was working.
The fire captain was there, and they started talking, and he offered her a tour of the station.
He said that they were always looking for volunteers, people to train to respond to local fires whenever they could.
I filled that application out, broad the next day.
I remember calling my sister freaking out, being like, oh my god, Megan, you'll never guess it just happened.
Like screaming, I was so excited.
And she's like, that's like the least surprising thing you could have done.
*music*
We'll get back to the story in a second.
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And now back to our story.
Two years after joining the fire department, Anna regularly responds to calls.
Boots.
Turn out pants.
Put on.
Suspenders.
Velcro.
Clip.
Jacket.
Zip.
Flap at the top.
Helmet.
Run to the truck and go.
Run to the truck and go.
In case it's not clear here, that's Anna driving the fire truck.
It's one of her favorite parts of the job.
The people she grew up with are pretty surprised when they hear that she can drive one.
Even her mom can't get used to it when Anna's visiting back home.
Yeah, I was bringing my mom to a doctor's appointment.
I was backing into a parking spot, a parking garage, and my mom is being a typical mother, and she's like, watch yourself, like, do you sure you have enough space?
I'm like, mom, I drive a freaking fire truck.
I think I can back into a parking space with your little sedan.
Yeah, she's a badass.
She's a badass, no doubt about it.
That's Anna's captain, Patrick Eli.
He's the guy who first gave Anna the application in the parking lot and has trained Anna since the start.
And uh, she has been just awesome.
Uh, part of this fire department.
She's very much involved with all aspects.
She has proven herself on multiple different occasions to be dependable.
You know, if somebody was down, she'd do everything she could to get you out, and she wouldn't leave you.
So she's very dependable.
And I find her uh extremely tough with a uh with a gentle undertone.
That's just the way I see her.
So Pat is not the only one.
Just like in her construction work, whoever knows Anna and sees her in action has a deep respect for her, no matter who she is or what she looks like.
You know, the thing is when you put a mask on your face and you put your helmet on, you're you're just like the next guy, and no one's gonna def differentiate between that.
As long as you're doing the job, there is no differentiation.
I mean, you you can't tell who's who most of the time when you're fully geared up with your air pack on and and gloves and helmet.
I mean, unless you're you know, especially in a smoky environment, and you're just hoping that person behind you knows her job.
I definitely stand out because they're like, wow, that's a really little guy.
Like, there was one fire where they took a picture of a group of us, and I'm like, oh my god, I look like a child.
You know, there's that, but then I can fit in really small spaces, so like there's pros to it.
In the last two years, Anna's responded to somewhere between 150 and 200 calls.
Yeah.
And when she talks about all this, she gets this really intense, slightly maniacal look in her eyes.
I want to do it.
I need to do it.
I ask her if she remembers the first time she responded to a fire call.
Oh my god, I was so excited.
That sounds terrible to say.
I mean, I was just like, the adrenaline is unbelievable.
Most of the fires, the bigger structure fires I've had are middle of the night, so you're passed out, and you just hear the tone.
You wake up and you hear structure fire you hear.
You hear that, and you go from like sleepy to 100% awake, and your heart is racing.
So you're just trying to get everything together, get out the door, get there to get your engine and go.
That first fire, it was a big one in a smaller town.
It was a house on top of a hill.
I remember looking up on the hill, and you just saw the light from the fire.
So you just saw it burning, you saw some of the smoke, but it was just this glow, really.
So it was like, oh my god, and just kind of like almost speechless, awestruck.
Or you watch it grow and you see it, and it's almost pretty in a way, and then you're like, it's not though, because it's destroying someone's property, But you just can see how you can lose something so quickly.
You don't want those calls, but also like that's what you do.
It's like an adrenaline rush to get them because you know it's gonna be chaos.
It's gonna be a really intense situation.
But it's also heartbreaking because you see somebody that's losing everything.
That house was total loss it burned to the ground, pretty much.
When someone calls 911, they're having the worst day of their lives.
Nobody calls 911 because they're having a good day.
Fire captain Patrick Eli again, who's in charge of training recruits like Anna for moments like that.
And one thing I tell new people is it's not your emergency, it's their emergency.
You're the person responsible for making a difference for that person's day.
That's why we do training on such a regular basis so that we're all on the same page about things.
Um but the reason is that you're extremely proficient, because uh you only have seconds to make a difference.
A lot of work environments are collaborative.
But as far as civilian jobs go, this is one where you depend on the person next to you for survival.
Absolutely.
You have to trust these people.
It's life and death, so they are your family.
And you were really lucky to have each other.
They welcome you in and they include you with everything, and again, I think you just see things that most people don't see.
So you have that unique bond built in that you don't share with everybody.
Regardless of volunteering to run into a burning building, being a firefighter has nothing to do with having a death wish.
No firefighter will tell you that it does.
But you're close to death.
It's a job where you have to look it right in the face in order to be good at what you do.
Anna knows that.
And despite her job, she says she really doesn't think about it that much.
The thing is, you don't have a choice.
You're gonna go when you go.
I think there's some sort of plan or whatever.
So, I mean, if I have to go and it's doing what I love, like, what more can I ask for?
���� Do you think you'll ever stop fighting fires?
God, I hope not.
I imagine you as a like a little old granny in in full gear running into a fire.
That would be so awesome.
I think as far as jobs go, there's a lot of stereotypes about who works different jobs or who's allowed to.
We have subconscious images in our heads of what a plumber looks like, what a secretary looks like, what a politician looks like.
Anna Nadler is just one of the many people who can remind us that those stereotypes are nonsense.
The only thing they do is prevent people from picturing themselves in the jobs that they truly want to do and should be doing.
There are a lot of people along the way that tell you you can't do things.
Just go right through it.
You gotta you gotta keep going.
Whether she's wearing a hard hat at a bridge demolition or behind the wheel of a fire truck, Anna Nadler might not be who you expect to see doing that job, but she is exactly the person that you want doing them.
Not everybody wants to run into a burning building, so if I have that desire to do that and help out people if I can, how could I not act upon that?
You know, not many people want to, because you sound like you're nuts if you do.
So if I have that urge and that drive to do that, how could I not do that?
So you see it as kind of a responsibility.
Yeah, I feel obligated to.
Again, I'm willing to do it, so how could I not?
I mean, do you want to want run into a burning building?
I'm curious, but if I was in front of it, I don't know.
Only one way to find out.
For On the Job, from a comfy chair in a room that's not on fire, I'm Otis Gray.
*music*
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The season of On the Job is produced by Audiation and Red Seat Ventures.
Our executive producer is Sandy Smollins.
Our producer is Otis Gray.
The show is mixed by Matt Noble at the Loft in Bronxville, New York.
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