Single Family House, Smoke Showing

I have had my firefighter certification for less than a week and already I have been inside two structure fires. The first one was a small, contained kitchen fire and I got to go in with another guy and search for fire extension in the attic. We put on our face masks and started sucking down air while we crawled around the hot, confined space searching for hot spots. I felt the sweat rolling off of my face in rivers, I felt it roll down my back and pool in the spot where my turnout pants met the tshirt I was wearing. It was hot and there was smoke and dust everywhere, and I couldn't wipe the huge grin off of my face. I could hardly believe that I was actually being called to use everything I had learned in training! I was breathing air in an actual fire house! We stayed up for about 15 minutes to make sure that nothing would ignite, and when we came back outside and around the corner of the house, I could see six of my brothers standing at the engine. I pulled my face mask off and the grin was still there, bigger than ever. When they saw me they all started clapping, it was a moment of pride and comraderie that I had no idea would actually exist. When I told one of the guys who wasn't there about it he said, "what the hell is this, Ladder 49!? No one clapped for me when I came out of my first fire!" He was proud too, and it's amazing to really feel how much they all want me to succeed. We few, we happy few! We band of brothers.

And as I sit here typing this I can still smell the smoke on my clothing from the fire I just came out of. It was a mutual aid call to wellington, and when I pulled up to the station Markian was standing there motioning me to hurry up. "What's going on," I asked him as I ran past and started gearing up. "There's a worker in progress in Wellington and you're next to go." My heart lept into my throat. I double-checked all my gear. Triple-checked it. "House fire still burning?" "Yep." As I buckled my last buckle the two liuetenants and other firefighter who were going to came out to the bay from the control room, and we loaded onto our backup engine, 42. I grabbed one of the jump seats and put my headset on as we rolled out. "You guys should go ahead and pack up," the one LT said from inside the cab. We were going to be going in.

The drive to Wellington seemed to take twice as long as it usually does. My mind was a mobius strip of all the things we might do when we got there. I thought about handing the hoseline. Regulating my breathing to make the air last longer. Climbing up onto a roof with an axe and placing a roof ladder. The engine made a sharp right turn and I could smell smoke. We passed ambulances, police cars, rescue trucks, and came to a stop. I stood up, belted and cinched my air pack, grabbed a pike pole and pick head axe and headed toward the fire scene, toward my already in action mode LTs. LT Ryba was talking to one of WFD's officers, and as I walked up he looked at me, looked at the other firefighter who came with us, looked back at me and told me to get my air on. I saw smoke billowing out of the open attached garage, and out of a ventilation hole in the roof. I was swallowing my beating heart back down into my chest as I pulled the straps of my air mask tight against my face. All I could think to myself was that I needed to have a good seal against my face because we were going into heavy smoke conditions. I walked behind my LT toward the opening to the basement and the smoke kept getting worse and worse. One of the Wellington guys tapped me on the shoulder and put an axe in my hand while saying, "here you go, bro. Be careful." Firefighters in turnout gear are sexless and I chuckled to myself.

I kept close watch of Ben's airpack in front of me as we descended the cluttered staircase. There was a charged hoseline to my left which I made a point to keep contact with via my left foot. When we got halfway down the stairs I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. I heard Ben ahead of me, "you still with me Emily?" I knelt down to feel the hoseline in my hand and said, "I'm with ya," and hoped he didn't notice the quiver in my voice. Five more steps in and the only way I knew I was heading in the right direction was that hoseline in my hand. I prayed that the guys ahead of me were following it too, that it wouldn't be an unmanned nozzle at the end. Five more steps after that there was a break in the smoke and I could see the beam of the flashlight ahead. Ben turned to me and asked for the axe. He started to put it through one of the overhead windows and even though the glass was broken I noticed that there wasn't any smoke moving. I went up to it and saw that there was a plastic dome over the top and asked him for the axe back. I shoved it up through the plastic, ripping huge holes into it, and the smoke started to move out. He let me do the other two windows in the room and it dawned on me that it's not an exaggeration when people say firefighting is the most physically demanding job in the world. I was standing in a room that was probably 150 degrees, wearing about 50 pounds of gear, trying to shove a 15 pound axe head through a small overhead window. My shoulders were screaming. My forearms went into some prehistoric overdrive. My breathing quickened and I gave up the thought to try and regulate it. When I was done with the windows my heart was beating harder in my chest than it's ever beaten before.

We stayed in the basement for about another ten minutes. We found the homeowner's dog, dead from smoke inhalation. When we went upstairs I found the cat, also dead. I wrapped it in a towel and took it out to the backyard, away from the homeowner's eyes. I went around front, turned off my airpack, took off my helmet and mask and knelt on the ground. I said a prayer, asking for more strength. I was utterly tapped out. I sucked down gatorade and sat in the shade of a tree, watching all of the hustle and bustle around the house. When I got to the point that I felt I could go back in, Wellington cleared us to leave the scene. I left with a mixed feeling of excitement for having gotten the experience, and disappointment for feeling that I could have done more, should have been less exhausted. There is so much to learn. Today is the first time that it really sank in. I'm a firefighter.

The Color Red

"I'm not always as sure of myself as I seem," this, to me, has always been one of the most poignant moments in The Royal Tennenbaums.

I have been feeling life crush down around me in so many ways lately. Depression. And then he leaves a message after message with that voice so little and afraid and alone and terrible, Can You Just Call Me Back. Been Feeling Low. Falling Apart. There is still such a huge part of me that wishes I could take care of you, everythingisgonnabeok.

I wish it was easier to just not care if you ever did anything with your life. There is some part of me that is kittied up to your stability. I want to see you make it. Why do you keep falling down, tripping over your own feet? I think about your future and I feel a deep dark cancer snaking its way out, all the way down. The world breaks everyone.

Zeus,
bring down the rains
on the land and the fields of athens.

Sing Loud, Sing Proud

I just wanted to say,
Thank You for being in my life, for always being there with the right thing to say and the right mental attitude. Every time I hear your voice on the radio I grin and I think about the thundercats, how we used to think we could transfer our energy to each other like they could. Truth is I still believe we can do that. When I'm 30 feet in the air on a ladder and have to climb off onto a roof with all my gear on and an axe in one hand, my knees don't shake because I picture you doing in-and-outs, running for six miles yelling cadence, really knowing in some deeply seated place that you're invincible. I think about that and I feel it too.

Thank the gods that I did whatever I did in a previous life to have been born with one so strong.

Tidal Waves

It has been a total whirlwind. Wake to work to class to calls to sleep to wake to work and the cycle goes on and on, cramming food and studying in whenever I have enough time to come up for air. It's all so exciting and the bonds that have formed already in EMT class have reaffirmed my belief in myself and my abilities. Fire school tends to crush my spirit little by little because it's all guys and there is so much posturing that goes on. I end up judging myself harshly and too much, and sizing myself up to impossible standards. With the EMT classes, people are younger and less set in trenchant ideas of who should be able to do what, and plus, most of the guys in the class want to be firefighters someday and I think I've earned their respect simply by already being one. Plus I act goofy as hell and can usually answer all the questions, and my natural leadership abilities are really taking center stage. Yesterday we learned how to use the various lifting and moving equipment, one of which was a stair chair. A stair chair is a really rugged chair that has tracks on the back of it. It's designed to be like a human dolly, and you can basically roll the patient down a set of stairs via the tracks if you have them rolled back toward the head, like a dolly. It is a pretty heavy piece of equipment but it's designed so that when you're using it right, moving somebody up and down stairs is simple. We took our instructor down three flights in different groups, and when we got to the bottom he wanted us to do it again. "Ok, let's get this thing back up!" he said, looking at the chair. Without thinking I went up to it, broke it down, hoisted it up into my arms and started walking up the stairs with the rest of the class behind me. My instructor just said, "ok then." Someone in the class said "geez, muscles!" and one of the guys whistled at me. I was telling mom that I think being on the FD and especially the academy has conditioned me to just springing into action with confidence before one of the guys does. The constant need to prove myself. The constant need to show that I can do anything they can do, better......

On my way back into town on Tuesday night I was heading South on 58 and saw our main engine, 41, barreling toward me. I pulled over and 41 stopped in front of Hall Auditorium so I got out and geared up. Then our aerial and rescue trucks arrived and I asked Mark what was going on. He didn't know. People from both shifts started showing up to the call, and I overheard something about an extinguishing system going off. Two of our guys packed up and went in on air and I started asking questions. "Do you know what a Halon system is?" The assistant chief asked me. "It's an oxygen exclusion extinguishing system used for energized electrical equipment." The guys standing around looked at me. "Somebody read the book," Joe said, looking at me. They chuckled. I beamed. Why am I such a geek? I definitely felt like Anne's twin in that moment, for both of our eagerness to prove not just that we have the brawn but that we have the brains to make the brawn useful.

At the end of the call my Lt., Shawn, recruited me to help him put the SCBAs back together. After I washed the regulators I recruited a couple of the other rookies to help me reconnect everything. I had to remind one of them to test it out before putting it back on the truck, and what to look for! I feel sleazy blowing my own horn, but it was such a vindicating feeling. As I was taking the last pack back into the bay, one of the other lieutenants said to no one in particular, "Man, we got a girl on Carlyle and we can't get her to do anything... and here's Emily doing it all!" I couldn't suppress the grin. I was just glad that I had my back to them and was halfway out the door and could feign ignorance that the comment was even made.

I love this job.