Marcel Melanson and his fellow firefighters provide hope and help to residents. They’re profiled in the new BET series ‘First In.’
Being seen as a hero is something Marcel Melanson has become accustomed to after 13 years as a firefighter. But it’s the newfound attention that comes with starring in a reality show that is harder to accept.
“I got pulled over the other day by a cop to get an autograph,” laughed Melanson, who is deputy chief of the Compton Fire Department. “I didn’t do the show to be a celebrity.”
Melanson is one of the city’s firefighters that are followed in BET’s new reality series, “First In.” The show, which airs Wednesdays, follows the lives of Compton’s fire and emergency crews as they struggle to balance family life with careers that pivot on life and death.
The stark challenges are made clear in the show’s first few episodes, when crew members are dispatched to the scene of a deadly gang-related shooting and then race to save a woman trapped underneath a house after a twin-engine plane crashes into the structure nose first. (Miraculously, the woman survives).
