Firefighter Close Calls

Home of the Secret List

KY. FIRE CHIEF BATTLING CANCER, NOW COVID-19 TOO

 Rick Markley    November 25, 2020    No Comments

By Brooke Hasch, WHAS11

his Thanksgiving will be especially hard for the Zoneton Fire Protection District, whose chief is in the fight of his life, battling both COVID-19 and cancer.

“It happened so quick,” Capt. Steven Corbin with Zoneton Fire said.

It was late September when Chief Rob Orkies told his crew the news.

“He sent out a message and told all the members who could, to come to the fire house, that he had something to say. I don’t think there was one person in that room who thought it would be cancer,” said Corbin, who lost his own father to cancer just a month before.

After more than 30 years of battling fires in and around Zoneton, this would prove to be Orkies’ most challenging fight. Doctors found the late stage cancer in his neck and lymph nodes.

A week into his treatments, he tested positive for COVID-19 and has been on a ventilator, and sedated since Saturday, Nov. 21.

Just days before, Orkies was determined to come home and be an advocate for the state’s mask mandate.

“The last message that Chief wrote back was asking if I’d reach out to the governor for some ‘Mask Up Kentucky’ masks. He wanted one when he got out,” Corbin said.

Read the full story here.

 Firefighter Cancer, News

Also check the most current issue of THE SECRET
LIST
(Click Here)

Sign Up for Secret List

For Email Newsletters you can trust.

Please Visit
Our Sponsor

GordonGraham.com


YOU NEED THIS BOOK!
(Trust Us)

400+ PAGES.
90+ CONTRIBUTORS!
100% of the royalties from the sales of "PASS IT ON" will be donated to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and the Chief Ray Downey Scholarship Fund.
CLICK ABOVE TO ORDER YOUR COPIES TODAY!


 

Pass It On: The Second Alarm

BillyG-book-170



Posters

Click to Print

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Apparatus
    • Crashes
    • Struck By
  • Close Calls
  • Contact Us
  • Drills
  • FIRE & EMS CIVIL DISORDER
  • EMS Close Calls
  • Fire Communications
  • Firefighter Cancer
  • Firefighter History
  • Firefighter Staffing
  • Gallery
  • LODD Calendar
  • Modern Fire Behavior
  • NIOSH Lessons Learned
  • NIOSH LODD Reports
  • Pass It On
  • Personal Survival
  • Safety and Survival
  • Secret List
  • SOG’s
Submit Your
CLOSE CALLS /
NEAR MISS

 

LODD STATS

YearTotals
202063
201957
201885
201793
201689
201586
201494
2013101
201283
201181
201087
200993
2008118
2007118
Tweets by @alertpage

Search Site

In Memory Of

fdnyClick this patch

Contact Info

Email BillyG
info@firefighterclosecalls.com

Email Weekly Drill
Suggestions to

Drills@firefighterclosecalls.com

helmet

ragusa

Click Here for The 9/11 Widows’ and Victims’ Families Association

ssc

Click Here: Skyscraper Safety Campaign


Copyright © 2003-2021

Copyright Disclaimer: This non-commercial, non-profit and free use website is for the exclusive purpose of firefighter safety, health and survival. All photographs in these posts are either submitted or from aggregate Google and are used in the postings for the purposes of education, satire, and parody, criticism, news reporting, research, and scholarship consistent with 17 USC §107 and never due to intentional or malicious misuse of a copyright.