A home for the holidays

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It’s a day Kevin Sirois said he will remember and which he will be thankful for the rest of his life.

After falling more than 25 feet while working on his garage in Bradley one October day, Sirois was left with broken bones and unable to finish work on his house and garage.

“My whole house was open to the weather,” Sirois said.

To make matters worse, it was more than a week before doctors realized that Sirois had fractured the tibia in his right leg in addition to breaking his left foot.

Coming from a family of firefighters, Sirois knew his career with the Orono Fire Department provided him with a second family, but he did not know how strong that connection was until one Saturday morning earlier this month.

“I had no idea what was going on,” Sirois said. “It’s amazing the family within a family you have. There’s no other career or job that you could find it.”

Fellow Orono firefighter Dennis Bean, who Sirois described as a brother, made plans to help his friend with some help from Sirois’ father, retired Old Town firefighter Gary Sirois.

“We think the same, we come from the family tradition of the fire service, and he’s an awesome person,” Kevin Sirois said of Bean. “I don’t think you could find a nicer guy.”

A firefighter for 31 years, Gary Sirois said he knows all about the second family firefighting provides.

“It happens all the time everywhere when there’s a special cause,” he said. “They really group together.”

Sirois and his fiancee, Kristy Michaud, bought the two-story house on Cram Street three years ago and have been remodeling one room at a time.

“It was a good fixer-upper,” Sirois said, watching from the kitchen as his two-year-old daughter Hannah colored at the dining room table.

Since his injury, Sirois said he has enjoyed the time home with his daughter, who stopped coloring, gathered her baby dolls together and turned her attention to Tigger, the family cat.

Bean wanted to get a bunch of firefighters together to finish enough of Sirois’ remodeling project to get the family comfortably through the winter. He began making plans in October at the Pine Tree Burn Foundation conference in Bar Harbor

“This was in the works for over a month,” Sirois said.

Trying not to ruin the surprise, Gary Sirois got his son to make a list of what needed to be done.

On Saturday morning, Nov. 5, Sirois went with Bean to get support beams at Stillwater Lumber. Little did he know that Bean had a crew of firefighters from Orono, Old Town, Hampden, Veazie, Hermon Ambulance, and as far away as Presque Isle gathering at Birmingham Funeral Home in Old Town in a convoy of 10 to 15 vehicles.

“These firefighters are all hunters,” Sirois said. As he started naming vehicles driving by his house, Sirois said he thought, “They should be hunting.”

“I can’t even explain it. [Dennis] looked at me, and that was it,” Sirois said. “When I talk to him, I still get choked up about it.”

The firefighters insulated the house, put down subfloor, did electrical work, hung windows and prepared the garage to be sided. All the work was done in one day, and some of the crew stayed until nearly 10 p.m.

Matt Redding of Old Town responded to the ambulance call when Sirois fell. Workers pouring foundation at the front of the house heard the ladder fall and Sirois’ cries for help.

“Matt was one of the ones that came four weeks later and was pounding nails,” Sirois said.

Sirois, a junior firefighter in Old Town at age 14, said he knew that the firefighting community had a strong sense of family, but he didn’t know how powerful it was until his accident.

“You always know it’s there, but until something like this happens – it’s just unbelievable,” he said.

As he watched friends and strangers pick up hammers and pound nails, Sirois said all he could think was that it was like his own episode of ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

“It was as great as that … but almost better because it was my own brothers,” Sirois said.

It was an emotional day for all involved, and Kevin Sirois’ father still gets teary-eyed when he talks about it.

“I had to turn around and walk away,” Gary Sirois said. “They really thought about everything. That day I couldn’t believe it.”

“He’s truly a great father,” Kevin Sirois said. “I couldn’t ask for a better one.”

Sirois’ father and other family members, including brothers Nick and Brian Sirois, uncles Ron and Jim Lavoie, and nephew Chris Lavoie, all have been a “huge help.”

There’s still work to be done on the house and garage, but Sirois said that what really needed to be accomplished was done with the help of his family and the firefighting community.

Typar covers the outside of the garage that is waiting to be sided, and the newly expanded living room needs finish work.

“I still want to do stuff,” Sirois said, motioning to the wall that someday will be covered with v-match pine boards. “I can’t wait to get going on it.”

Sirois’ left foot has healed. Standing with help from his crutches, Sirois said he hopes to get the black brace off his right leg at the end of the month so he can get back to work.

Sirois knows he hasn’t heard the last word about his fall. Shortly before his fall, Sirois taught a class on ladder safety in Bradley, where he is a member of the volunteer fire department.

“I got made fun of quite a bit,” he said, noting that he realized he had made a mistake.

Leaning on his crutches in the kitchen and looking across the room at all the work that was done, Sirois said it’s something he and his family definitely will think about today.

“I look at it every day and wonder where I’d be without these guys,” Sirois said. “I’d probably be freezing.”

Sirois isn’t one to ask for help and said he can’t stand to sit around, but he described the help he received from family and friends as a “big sigh of relief.”

“It’s a lifelong appreciation to those guys that I probably never will be able to repay,” Sirois said. “I think about it every day.”