This morning i was laying in my bed and could not fall asleep. At about 2:20 am my fire pager went off and scared the shit out of me. The call was a mutual aid request from St Clair Fire for a house fire just across the river from us. I put on my clothes and made sure that my dad was ready. We ran out the door and drove to the Fire hall. When we got there some other guys were already dressed in their gear ready to roll, so i put on my gear and jumped into unit 5415 which is a 3500 gallon water tanker. I the called dispatch on the radio and said our unit is reponding. When we got there St Clair was not there yet so we set up as the primary attack lines off our pumper. As we were setting up St. Clair arrived.

With St Clair getting there i went over to our truck on through on a air pack. We then breifed St. Clair on what we had before they sent two guys in to attack the fire. Myself and a fellow fire fighter from south bend fire (the dept that i am on) were on the back up line in case something happened to the crew inside. When the crew inside ran out of air they came out and we went in. I will admit that i was kinda scared because this is the real deal. The only other fire i have be into was a training burn for my fire class. So our crew went in and picked up where the first crew has left off. We went into a bedroom just off the kitchen to the west and started to attack the fire. While we were in there, we started to hear wood cracking and then i a split second we started to exit the room for safety reasons. I was about 2 feet from the door and the bedroom ceiling collasped and i could feel the wood hitting my back. My partner the called to fire command that was on scene and said that the the room we were in ceiling collasped and that no one was injured. We stayed in the house for about 30 minuates and then my air pack ran out of air so we backed out of the house. I then went over the air truck that was there to get my air tank refilled so i would be ready to go again. When we were there I went on the roof went the cheif from St Clair and we started to ventilate by cutting holes in the roof to let the heat out. We were on scene until 7:30 am and then they cheif from St Clair had an excavator brought in to tear the house apart to put out the hotspots so that we would not get called back.

After all was said and done i came home and got ready for work and man was it a long day. The one thing that I learned from this is to not take life for granted because you never know when god is going to say it your time to go.