I awoke suddenly to the sounds of sirens. That brilliant wail piercing through the chilled night air. It sounded like it was right outside my window. Momentarily I was miffed...how come the pager hadn't gone off? Why was I not on that truck? Who didn't invite me to come out and play? Then I remembered. I was far from home, staying in downtown Indianapolis for a conference. I wasn't home and those sounds didn't belong to my department.
But that didn't matter, those sirens do something to me. I was instantly on high alert. I could feel my adrenal glands instinctively reacting to the high pitched welps. It's the old fight or flight response that is hardwired into us from an earlier time when there was danger everywhere. Do I stay and fight or it is time to hit the dusty trail? My senses become heightened and even though it was 3am I was wide awake and ready to go. The same thing happens at home when the pager goes off during the night. We go from being in deep deep sleep to awake, very awake. There is a surge in blood pressure, body temperature, and heart rate. Respiration elevates as we start to go through a quick mental checklist.
I remember the night of my first fire. It was a warm July night at about 0230 when the pager sprang to life. There were a string of multiple tones indicating that something serious was going on. Each tone is a different department getting activated. Firefighters just like me being awoken all simultaneously for the same job. We were headed mutual aid to Pittsfield for a single family unoccupied structure fire. From the end of Rt 126 as we turned left onto Rt 28 the orange glow hung low in the night sky. This was no false alarm. I was in the middle seat in the back of the engine and I was fumbling the straps to my airpack, making sure I had a flashlight and a radio. Note to self...next time grab the radio and flashlight before cinching up the straps the SCBA. I was thanking myself at that moment because I had taken the extra 10 seconds to put my contacts in.
When we pulled up on scene the house was fully involved. Our assignment was to attempt a stop before the fire destroyed the garage. Getting down onto our knees, we quickly donned our face masks, tightened our helmets and put our SCBA regulators into place. We advanced our hoseline into the door and I think we made it about 20 feet into the breezeway connecting the house to the garage. The flames were lapping furiously across the ceiling above us and the heat was hot, but not unbearable because of our protective clothing. We were here to dance with the devil and send him packing. This was everything I had spent the last months in Firefighter 1 getting trained to do. And everything worked like clockwork. We made the stop and saved the garage. As I sat in rehab later that morning the past two hours were surreal. Had I just done that? This had to be a dream, but it wasn't and I had done exactly as I had been trained to. And I wanted more. Little did I know that the next month was going to be a wild and crazy ride and would serve as the beginning of my fire service career. Days later I would be at my second fire and weeks after I would be in the first truck on scene of the aftermath of an EF-2 tornado that directly hit our town.
No comments:
Post a Comment