While many will be sitting around a table with family and friends over the holiday season, groups of firefighters will around the QCA will be waiting in firehouses, away from their families.
"We're a family down here. It's like I have a bunch of brothers and sisters who are looking out for me, " says firefighter Amy Priest.
On Christmas Eve, she and her fellow fire fighters at Davenport Central sit down to a game of euchre while a meal was cooking in the oven.
It looked like a scene from a busy house over the holidays but, there is a job to do, when the time calls.
We spend sometime together, talk and bond but we are always ready to go when that call comes in," says Myles Metzger, Captain on Unit 2.
"Yeah, we get to sit down and hopefully have a meal," adds Shane Carter, "But if it gets interrupted, we gotta go and hopefully it will be here when it gets back.
The firemen and women here sacrifice their time with their family to be here, protecting their community.
Amy Priest and her husband are both fire fighters, working opposite shifts.. So Christmas for them and their three year old daughter will have to be put on hold for just a little while.
"I'll work today, he'll work tomorrow so we'll have to write a letter to Santa so he can bring the presents before or after the holiday."
But while life has to get put on hold for the job, it is certainly worth it in the end.
"We always gotta be ready," adds Carter, "We have no idea what we are going to face when we come into work."
