Tones sound while I lay in my bed, swiftly I arise, at this time movement is muscle memory. Sometimes being driven out of bed in the middle of the night feels like sleep walking through the halls. Only when the sirens assault my ears do I finally register anything. I always hated the monotone tone out before dispatch speaks. It's job was always sufficient, as it always woke me from slumber. Back when I did volunteer, we kept pagers with us, those damn things are far worse than any station tone out. Being woken up by one of those always gave me a headaches. I rubbed my eyes, and slapped my cheek. We were toned for a mutual aid fire meaning another city needed our help. Rondo, who had stepped up to Engineer since Danny had been terminated, was rushing to get on scene. The fire was an apartment complex with rapid spread potential.
When we pulled on scene an entire building was being engulfed and by the looks it wasn't slowing down. I can see other trucks pulling up. This is easily considered a five alarm because there were so many apparatus. Four close quarter buildings, one was fully engulfed. With the right wind to catch it, the fire could spread. They are setting up a staging area because there are so many different departments. One staging officer will give out our assignments. Excitedly we hop out, seeing that three ladder trucks and two engines have been set up to pump, and it's suck a tight area, our crew will probably not be pumping. I reported to staging to obtain my assignment.
"Tag please," the staging officer said. I handed him one of my two tags. It was a small photo identification with my call sign, the number 1039 and my full name. The other remains on my helmet. These are used to help identify where and what firefighters on a scene are doing. This same system was used during 9/11. Even though some firefighters' bodies were never recovered, these tags helped identify those that were lost.
"I need you on interior attack with Captain Gray."
"Sounds good." I was excited. I had only been on a handful of fires that were fully engulfed. Fires calls are either small or big there's no in between. Adonis and I made our move. Trucks pumping had to pump from the street. This required over a 1,000 feet of five inch hose. Once those large hoses are in place and charged there is no moving them around. At the pump, the Engineer pumps 140 psi into them, by the time it gets to our nozzle it's 100 psi. The hoses we carry into the fire are a one and three quarter inch that ways about 10 to 20 pounds. On top of that we carry forty pounds of equipment. Luckily we have trained well as a crew, we have learned to be in tune with one another. Especially we have learned to never leave your partner in a fire, both literally and metaphorically. Recent events have solidified this fact for me.
"Should we head in?" Adonis asked me in a muffled voice because he had on our SCBA masks. We breathed carefully to conserve our air as we held the hose standing at the gaping abyss that was a door to one of the apartments. Unfortunately what is seen in movies isn't real because structure fires are pitch black.
"Let's do this." We entered the darkness. It took a few moments to adjust to the void of the bottom level three bedroom apartment. If we are carful with our air, we could have about forty-five minutes in our tanks. Usually we don't want to push the boundaries of what we can do and what we should do. Air is too valuable once in the fire because without it you die.
At the time of entry we didn't know where the fire started nor where it was coming from. Luckily
All the units were cleared and our main job was finding the culprit and hitting hotspots. We moved through the apartment carefully. The popping sounds of fire rattled in my ears. Entering the open door of the closest room, we pulled the hose in wetting the room down. I could see the outline of a crib, stepped forward searching for signs of fire. My toe tapped a small object, I looked down to see a stuffed animal. Without thinking I picked it up and shoved it in my oversized jacket pocket. The room clear, we headed out closing the door behind us. This makes it more difficult for the flames to engulf another room. The apartments living room and dining room had heavy smoke at the ceiling. Adonis took notice and pointed up.
"I think the fire is coming down from there," he yelled pointing. I thought the same. The next two bedrooms were across the living room next to one another. The heat intensified, which was a good indication that there was fire there. We could see from the short distance, as we made our way, that the flames in this room where rapidly spreading across the ceiling. I held the fog nozzle, using mod. Straight pattern I sprayed the rooms. The heat did not allow me to get too close to the doorway.
I felt a tug on the hose. Ignoring it I pressed on another five minutes, tug again. I looked, Adonis pointed to his SCBA. It had already been thirty minutes yet the fire's intensity had not decreased at all. In felt it felt even hotter. It was time to back out and focus on exposure protection. At this rate we were at risk of losing all the buildings.
" Let's go," I yelled, we began backing out. As we did so the ceiling quickly began deteriorating. Large pieces fell down crashing hard into the floor. I felt Adonis' pace quicken as he pulled me along with the hose. Suddenly, at the center of the room a large chunk fell on us, bits of plaster cracked against are helmets. Quickly shaking it off and making eye contact we began again. This time when I moved back, my helmet tugged on something. I shook my head and it became tighter. I reached up with my gloves hand to feel out the problem and no use. My arm also be camel caught in an invisible web. Adonis had noticed my stop. I shook violently to get loose but my ensnarement on worsened. One arm raised above my head one arm holding the hose I stood there for a moment. Moving only got me more tangled. Shit, what the fuck do I do! My heart was racing, I began to panic. I felt like a moth stuck in a web.
"I'm stuck," I called to Adonis, "Call for a mayday! I'm fucking stuck."