By 
April 3, 2025
The hero is Huntsville Fire & Rescue’s Jesse Kistler, the driver/engineer who raced to catch a toddler dropped to safety from a second-floor apartment window by her mother to escape billowing smoke and heat from a first-floor fire.
Pick your favorite accolade for Kistler and then pick another one. Amazing. Spectacular. Inspiring. Awesome. It’s storybook stuff, a once-in-a-career moment that was more an instinctual reaction developed through continuous training than the dramatic rescue it proved to be.
“When you see someone completely out of the window, you try to get there yesterday,” Kistler said.
HFR Driver/Engineer Jesse Kistler standing next to the truck he drove to the scene of the dramatic rescue.
In full context, however, heroes were everywhere at that fire on March 12 at the apartment complex at Academy Drive and Eastbrook Drive. HFR Stations 5 and 2 were dispatched to the scene and HFR Chief Howard McFarlen said both crews performed their duties flawlessly. Firefighters from Station 2 quickly knocked down the fire.
“Everybody was doing what they were supposed to be doing,” McFarlen said.
This symphony of symmetry is the result of long, intensive and sometimes monotonous training. It’s as much a part of the job as responding to calls, whether it’s learning new techniques or honing skills mastered as a rookie. On this call, the training shined through the firefighters.
“The training pays off,” McFarlen said. “These guys are always looking for more to do. They hit the spot. You don’t just walk out there and do this by accident.”
Huntsville Fire & Rescue Driver/Engineer Jesse Kistler.
Kistler acknowledged, however, that catching a child dropped from a second-floor window is not necessarily a part of the HFR training curriculum.
“There’s no special training for that,” Kistler said with a laugh. But as a dad, Kistler said he’s always tossing his young children into the air and catching them, making the rescue almost second nature.
Not all the heroes caught toddlers, though. Firefighters Patrick Satterfield and Dave Mehok jumped from the truck Kistler was driving, removed the ladder and together carried it about 50 yards on the run without a stumble. From the time the truck stopped, it took just over 30 seconds for the ladder to be in place to rescue the toddler’s mother.
Satterfield quickly scaled the ladder and carried the mother back down.
HFR Capt. Jimmy Davis saw the mother holding the baby out the window as the truck arrived on scene. He immediately rushed toward the building but, weighed down by about 60 pounds of turnout gear and an air tank, was outrun by Kistler.
As the driver, Kistler’s job is to get the truck in position and then conduct activities at the truck, including operating the pump on the truck if necessary. And with that assignment, he’s not burdened by the bulky, heavy equipment.
“I’m pretty sure I was running before the truck was fully stopped,” Kistler said. “I was running up there like it was my own child.”
Both Kistler and Davis believed the mother was going to drop the child before they got there. As he ran, Davis implored her to hold on for a few more seconds.
Once Kistler arrived at the building, the mother let the toddler drop and she landed safely in his arms.
“A situation like that, that’s instinct,” McFarlen said.
Then Kistler carried the toddler away from the danger and placed her on the ground next to a hydrant as he began connecting a five-inch hose.
Just following the training.
