Like most firefighters, the men of Aurora Fire Department Station 7 are used to being roused at 4 a.m. for an emergency call.
The call usually takes them somewhere else but early Sunday morning the emergency was banging on the firehouse door: a pregnant woman, moments away from giving birth.
“They’re fortunate that we were even here,” firefighter Zac Varela told NCB-9 News in Colorado. “Aurora is a very busy city. We are a very busy fire department. Chances are good that we’re not even here at four in the morning.”
“But I guess someone was watching out for these two because they came to the fire house and we were there.”
“They” refers to the woman and her own mother, who were racing through the night to a hospital when events evidently progressed too rapidly: the young mom-to-be was giving birth.
They pulled their SUV into the driveway of Station 7 and screamed for help.
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“There’s a lot of screaming. You know, ‘I am having a baby!’ And the mother to be, her mother is there as well. She’s yelling, ‘she’s having a baby!’ The sprinklers are on out front, a little pandemonium going on,” Varela said.
Firefighters quickly laid a towel out on the front lawn, helped the woman lay down in a “comfortable position,” and then assisted in bringing a new life into the world.
All of the station’s fire engines are equipped with a kit to assist in the birthing process, and firefighters from Station 7 have delivered six babies in the last five years.
Of course, none of them were on the front lawn of the firehouse.
“[The] baby was born in the wonderful neon lights of firehouse seven and [an] Applebee’s,” joked Varela.
As this human drama was unfolding, Varela noticed a much smaller side-plot unfolding amidst the chaos: the automated sprinkler system had activated on half of the lawn, and he knew that shortly the other side – where he, his men, and the impending mother – happened to be.
Luckily, an ambulance showed up and the new mom was moved inside – not a moment too soon.
“As we lifted her out of the grass the sprinklers on that side of the lawn turn off, the sprinklers at this end of the lawn turn on. Which is where she was laying,” Varela said.
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