606 Sunrise

I’m stuck.  Engine 33 has come to a halt and fire fills the view out the windshield, but I can’t move.  Which is gonna be a problem because I’m the one who is supposed to do the GPM on the BTU thing. 

As Brewers nation sleeps up one game to none, the pager pre-alert shrieks at 3:55 AM.  Roll left, feet hit the floor, grab the phone in one strangely deft motion for being jolted out of a dream. Cross the pitch-black house to the far-side bathroom without tripping on the bed or stepping on a cat, and “multi-task” before the dispatch itself goes off.  Press the “play” button with the free hand and hear the Columbia County dispatcher say, “active fire.” 

Two socks, two shoes, one pair of sweatpants.  On my way.  Thirteen other PDFD volunteers are too.

There’s no talking as we gear-up, disconnect 33 from her umbilicals and get ready to roll.  It’s thirteen minutes from station to fire, so there’s no time for chitchat.  Everyone just scans who is arriving and goes to where they’ll be most useful.  Two nights ago at our weekly training, we practiced something similar to what we’re about to do.  

Me and Probie Sam are first in the engine and take the interior seats.  Captain Brandon and Lt. Alan flank us on the rear-facing seats.  FF Mitch is at the wheel and Chief Cam is officer.  Our EMTs follow in an ambulance, as they do at every structure fire. 

EMT LT/FF Nate lives close to the house and goes directly to the scene.  He updates us over the radio as we race the growing fire and elevates the call to mutual aid from neighboring departments.   Both Assistant Chiefs will arrive directly from their homes.

County dispatch chimes in with a ten-minute benchmark as we close in.  In back, the attack foursome is making tentative plans that will only be finalized as we see the fire up close.  We’ll either pull a two and a half inch line and have three people man it or split into two teams of two, each with an inch and three quarters hose.  Speed will be critical.  The fire is in a rural part of our district.  There are long driveways, no hydrants and dry October forests.  

The radio chatters.  The siren wails.  My stomach growls.  In my dream the pager shrieked me out of, I must not have been hungry, because I left the emergency night call Snickers bar on the kitchen counter.   

I’ll skip the hydraulic science and simply note an inch and three quarter hose is sized to flow as much water as a firefighter (preferably two) can readily move and handle on their own.  It can still – easily – knock you on your ass.  In small bursts, one large firefighter can also handle a two and half inch line, but it gets very tiring, very quickly.  Physics being what they are, that extra three quarters of an inch of hose diameter can almost double the amount of flow, but it comes at a cost of becoming its own challenge to manage.  Factor in being first arriving and operating without hydrants, and the tactics need to be smart, and quick. 

Our tacticians have that covered. 

If only I could get my ass out of the seat. 

There’s about a hundred straps and buttons and snaps and velcroes (exaggerating slightly) that need to cascade in the right order for a firefighter to burst out of the back of a fire engine fully ready to go to work.  I swear, I did every one of them in the right order, no matter my Snickerless stomach.  The SCBA tanks are supposed to release from the seat as you stand up.  Mine is stuck. 

Brandon and Sam are out the door, and Engine 33 has enveloped me like a marsupial mom with a pouch on the fritz.  Alan takes note and yanks me out of the seat.  Two seconds lost, but it felt like … seventeen.

Fire is fully up the delta side and through the garage roof.  We’re going inch and three quarter crosslay and inch and a half bumper line.  Mitch does excellent work at the pump and I have water in less than thirty seconds.  Crack open the bale and get to work. Making up for the two second delay and conserving air while operating outside and upwind, I am masked but off air.

A mask narrows your field of vision, and when the only thing left in that field is fire, your situational awareness goes with it, so I can’t really say what was going on behind or to the side of me.  Captain Brandon is giving me tactical direction and our chiefs are doing big picture stuff.  Someone rips the garage door out of its tracks and we all clip into air and go interior.  Firefighters are ripping down ceiling sheetrock and I am blasting a buck fifty gallons of water a minute into well-charred rafters.

With the garage door removed, smoke clears quickly.  There’s a big picture on the wall of Johnny Cash being, well, Johnny Cash.  And in the thick of the fight, I smile.  You see, I have a certain affinity for smiling while fighting and black and white portraiture in interior design.  While I lived alone in California, I had a four by three-foot picture of Chrissie Hynde above the breakfast table.  We got along great.

Jim Marshall took the iconic photograph of Cash flashing his middle finger at San Quentin prison in 1969. During soundcheck, he suggested Cash pose for a picture for the warden. Johnny obliged.  Perhaps it was the moment, but standing in that garage, I thought the picture captured something intensely personal about fighting fire.  A defiant refusal to yield.

Fire arrived to destroy.  From five departments we arrived from our beds and our dreams to fight back.  Two dozen firefighters and EMTs roused from slumber arrived at a home with an attached garage with fire blowing through the roof -- miles from any fire hydrant -- and kept the fire from spreading into the home.  It would have been better if the fire never started, but it did. 

Roughly two-thirds of America's firefighters are volunteers. Together, we constitute less than two-tenths of one percent of the population. And we collectively raise a middle finger to the idea that we are all on our own, left to fend for ourselves.

The house saved, we all headed back as our communities slept.  Engine 33 had an impromptu stop at a vehicle / deer accident on the way back and our terrific EMTs stopped at Kwik Trip for donuts and breakfast sandwiches to feed us when we got back.  The hoses got washed, the air tanks got refilled, and the report got finished as the sun rose to start everyone else’s day. 

And if you think being startled out of sleep to head off to who knows what could be dispiriting, you don’t know Poynette Dekorra Fire Department.