Most of you know that I am a fiction Author. But what I am
about to tell you is not fiction but true and factual. Most of you also know I
was a Fire Fighter for the City of Brooklyn Park. What I am about to tell you,
happened to me and a man named Bill. (Not his real name.)It probably happens
much more then we realize and it really makes no difference where you might be
a firefighter. This could happen anywhere.
It was a daytime fire in our city and we were short of manpower
at most daytime calls as we were a paid on call department. The call came in as
a fire in an apartment building in the southwest corner of the city. The police
on the scene were evacuating the building when we arrived, about seven minutes
into the call. There was one chief officer on the scene and he told us the fire
was in a back apartment, on the ground floor. There was little to no access
from the outside. We were told to lay a hose line down the hallway to the unit
and attack the fire from the hallway. Bill and I took the only line being used
and proceeded in.
From the time we got into the hallway the heavy smoke and
heat told us either the door was open or had burned through. Visibility was
zero. Unbeknownst to us the walls of the hallway we were crawling down were
decorated with wooden cedar shingles. We crawled over halfway to the unit,
pulling our hose line with us, when the temperature in the hallway peaked,
spontaneously ignited the shingles. Bill and I were in a tunnel of fire. You
have two choices here. Turn and get out-- and at this point probably get burned
badly on the way out-- or press on and get that water on the root of the fire
and cool it down. The fire in the hallway was being fed from the fire in the
apartment. It did no good to fight it in the hallway. Long story short. We got
to the door and extinguished the fire. Why am I talking about this because it
was later that night, when it really sunk in, what could have happened to Bill
and I. After the fire was out I got a chance to go back into that hallway.
Soggy blackened sheet rock and light fixtures and alarm pull stations melted to
the walls. My plastic helmet shield had melted in there and the paint had been
burned off Bills air tank on his back. Unknowingly we were seconds away from
becoming more fuel for that fire.
I went home that night and my wife was washing dishes when I
came in the door. She turned to say something to me and I just took her in my
arms and hugged her tight. “My what got into you? ” she said. “I just have a new
appreciation for life,” I replied. “Where’s the kids, lets go out to supper.” I
sat in that restaurant with my family and thanked God for giving them to me and
letting me be there with them, safe and sound. I never told my wife about the
fire. If I had, I would have been resigning the next day, because she would
have made me do it.
I wrote this because a while back I woke up at two in the
morning and I was back in that hallway--in the midst of a bad dream. Although
we never talked about it, I’m sure Bill feels the same way as I did about that
day. From the outside, it wasn’t really that bad of a fire when it was all over
and barely made the news.
It’s fire prevention week this week. Do what you can to keep
fires from starting in the first place and if you know a firefighter. Say
thanks.
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