THE FIRST FIRE

The burning rooms. The hot, smoky air. Just me and the company battling a raging inferno. I was barely twenty-two. My first real fire. I remember it well.

We were sleeping when the fire alarm sounded. We jumped out of bed, slid down the pole, and grabbed our gear as we headed for the fire trucks. As I suited up, I couldn’t help but feel excited, yet a sense of fear also swept over me. I didn’t know what to expect. I just kept telling myself that it would be just like the drills at the academy. But I knew it would not be the same. Nobody really cared if the practice building burned down. But this, this was someone’s home. A family lived there, and it was all up to us. Whether or not this family still had a home and their lives depended solely on the company’s brave men. I hopped off the truck and proceeded to unravel a fire hose. I then connected it to a fire hydrant. I flung the rest of the hose over my shoulder and ran to my company’s side. We were going in.

There were flames everywhere inside the house, and not much room to move around in without being eaten by the glowing blaze. As I turned the corner, I saw my first victim. It looked like an older person, lying dead on what appeared to be a couch, completely engulfed in the flames. The body was already charred and their hair had burned completely off. The sight of the body made me sick to my stomach, but I had to press on. Somewhere, there had to be more. Ones who hadn’t been swallowed to death by the towering inferno. As I ascended the stairs, I noticed that it became hotter near the top. It seemed as if the source of the fire was on the second floor. I tightened my grip on the axe I was carrying and dashed through the flames into a nearby room.

This room looked like a child’s room. There was not much left of it, though, except for some toys which hadn’t melted all the way yet. I thoroughly searched the room as best as I could, but found nothing. I continued to the next room. Another child’s room, but was not as bad as the first. This one soon, too, would become just a pile of wood and ashes. I checked this room as well, and again, found no sign of life. It wasn’t until I had stepped back into the hall did I hear the faint cries of a tiny person. Two distinct cries, to be exact. But no matter had hard I tried, I could not seem to locate where the voices were coming from.

Suddenly, I heard another voice. This time it came from my radio. The chief was calling us back to the front of the house. I started down the stairs when I heard it again. Torn between the chief’s orders and the voices, I looked in both directions. I don’t know why, but I just stood in the middle of the staircase, in a daze. I could not go up or down. As the flames climbed higher, I managed to snap out of my daze and instantly bolted back up the stairs and into that second room. The cries were louder now, but I still was unable to figure out just where they were coming from within the room. I looked and looked, and at last, my eyes focused in on a small foot hanging outside the closet door. I slid the door to the right, and there, huddled together in a blanket, were two children.

I dropped my axe and quickly picked up the frightened kids, blanket and all, and ran down the stairs. As I tried to escape through the front doorway, a rush of flames and smoke pushed me back. It was as if the fire had a mind of its own. It was like it knew that I wanted to leave, and yet, it prevented me from fleeing to safety.

The children were already beginning to suffer from smoke inhalation, and the alarm on my O2 bottle was going off, indicating that I was about to run out of oxygen. There was very little time left, but I had to reach the outside. That is when I discovered another door. The only means of escaping now was through that back door. I kicked the door down and safely reached the nighttime sky. Around the side of the house I ran until I came to the front.

I handed the children to the paramedics and promptly unfastened my coat. I was hot as hell. I took the tank off my back and began to cough violently. The medics rushed over and insisted I breathe in some fresh oxygen. When I finally caught my breath, I pushed off my helmet and peeled my coat off my body. Relieved from the heat, I walked over to where the children were.

They were being examined for possible injuries. Luckily, they only sustained a few minor cuts and burns and inhaled some smoke. With a little oxygen and some TLC, they would be fine. As I watched the kids play with a couple of fire helmets, I realized exactly what it meant to be a firefighter, and I knew that it was the career I wanted. It was not just enough to extinguish a burning house, but if one can save it’s inhabitants, then one is truly remarkable.

I became a hero for the first time that night. From then on, I greeted each fire as a new adventure, and as my experience grew as a fireman, I also grew as a person. It didn’t matter to me if I was a hero because this was my job. But to be a hero in the eyes of a complete stranger was more than enough to convince me that I had picked one of the greatest careers as person could ever have.

August 1994