pack strap. Always partner up, the instructor said, never become separated. Gripping the strap, facedown, unable to see, I tried to raise my head. The oxygen hose resisted, levering the mask from my face, breaking the seal. A rush of air hissed out around my ears. I realigned my face, and the hissing stopped. I still couldn’t see. Scrabbling forward, I heard a clang. My oxygen bottle had struck the underside of a fire truck, wedging me against the floor. I was suddenly air-hungry. The measured huff and chuff of the respirator became more insistent. Claustrophobia pressed in. Sweat leapt to my skin. The motion sensor attached to my collar began to caw. An image flashed: Flames. Heat. Dark smoke, thick as poison pudding. Wedged against the concrete, unable to see, unable to move, I suddenly understood what panic for oxygen might drive a man to do. I sucked air out of the tank faster and faster, wasting it, trying to keep up with my heartbeat. My partner wriggled free. I lost my grip on his strap. The low-air alarm kicked in, an incongruous, flatulent ting-a-ling. A thought presented itself, unbidden: You can die doing this.
Nonetheless, fire is a tantalizing enemy. It has an undeniable pull. It lures you close, dares you inside. But as a firefighter, you must look beyond fire’s hypnotic face. You see fire, you see it billow and snap, you watch it do its angry amorphous dance, and you are mesmerized into believing it has no more shape than a soul. But to a firefighter, fire is fundamentally geometric. Five minutes into our first evening class, the instructor drew a triangle on the chalkboard. Then he labeled each point: heat, fuel, and oxygen. “The fire triangle,” he announced. The fire triangle isn’t fire; it is only the potential for fire. For fire made manifest, you need one more ingredient: an uninhibited chemical reaction. “The fire tetrahedron ,” said the instructor, replacing the triangle. He looked around the room. “Remove any one element of the tetrahedron and you put out the fire.” It’s that simple.
Until you get there. The geometry of fire is one thing. The behavior of fire is another. It grows in volatile stages: The incipient phase, in which a fire is born. Rollover, in which combustible vapors accumulate at ceiling level, then explode into a rolling “fire front.” The free-burning phase. Flashover, in which an entire room becomes superheated to the point of simultaneous ignition. The smoldering phase. And then the Hollywood-friendly granddaddy of them all: backdraft. If a fire in a tightly sealed house cycles through the phases and depletes the available oxygen, it will settle into a brooding stasis. The house groans for air, and if you stick your ax through the door, you’ll be blown across the yard like a flaming marshmallow out a blast furnace. Should you awaken, you will likely do so in the nearest intensive-care burn unit.
Sometimes, when you’re feeling reckless, you forget that. It’s dangerous to get reckless, but it happens. There’s an undeniable thrill in fighting fire. There are as many reasons to volunteer for this job as there are firefighters, but at some level most of us have a perverse hunger for danger, a desire to be tested, to survive—a trial by fire, literally. I feel this recklessness sometimes, but it never lasts long. Every month, FireRescue Magazine runs a column titled “In the Line of Duty.” It never lacks material. Article VI, Section 5, of our department’s bylaws, a copy of which you are provided upon joining, outlines the procedure for draping the headquarters in mourning.
Of course, remove the danger and firefighting is just plain fun. You get full-grown toys, you get to drive fast, and you get to spray water. Guys who join up for these reasons roar off to their first fire, and it’s a rush, and they’re all hot damn and rock-and-roll. Then the fire’s out, and we spend three hours mopping up, and then another two hours back at the station
Nonetheless, fire is a tantalizing enemy. It has an undeniable pull. It lures you close, dares you inside. But as a firefighter, you must look beyond fire’s hypnotic face. You see fire, you see it billow and snap, you watch it do its angry amorphous dance, and you are mesmerized into believing it has no more shape than a soul. But to a firefighter, fire is fundamentally geometric. Five minutes into our first evening class, the instructor drew a triangle on the chalkboard. Then he labeled each point: heat, fuel, and oxygen. “The fire triangle,” he announced. The fire triangle isn’t fire; it is only the potential for fire. For fire made manifest, you need one more ingredient: an uninhibited chemical reaction. “The fire tetrahedron ,” said the instructor, replacing the triangle. He looked around the room. “Remove any one element of the tetrahedron and you put out the fire.” It’s that simple.
Until you get there. The geometry of fire is one thing. The behavior of fire is another. It grows in volatile stages: The incipient phase, in which a fire is born. Rollover, in which combustible vapors accumulate at ceiling level, then explode into a rolling “fire front.” The free-burning phase. Flashover, in which an entire room becomes superheated to the point of simultaneous ignition. The smoldering phase. And then the Hollywood-friendly granddaddy of them all: backdraft. If a fire in a tightly sealed house cycles through the phases and depletes the available oxygen, it will settle into a brooding stasis. The house groans for air, and if you stick your ax through the door, you’ll be blown across the yard like a flaming marshmallow out a blast furnace. Should you awaken, you will likely do so in the nearest intensive-care burn unit.
Sometimes, when you’re feeling reckless, you forget that. It’s dangerous to get reckless, but it happens. There’s an undeniable thrill in fighting fire. There are as many reasons to volunteer for this job as there are firefighters, but at some level most of us have a perverse hunger for danger, a desire to be tested, to survive—a trial by fire, literally. I feel this recklessness sometimes, but it never lasts long. Every month, FireRescue Magazine runs a column titled “In the Line of Duty.” It never lacks material. Article VI, Section 5, of our department’s bylaws, a copy of which you are provided upon joining, outlines the procedure for draping the headquarters in mourning.
Of course, remove the danger and firefighting is just plain fun. You get full-grown toys, you get to drive fast, and you get to spray water. Guys who join up for these reasons roar off to their first fire, and it’s a rush, and they’re all hot damn and rock-and-roll. Then the fire’s out, and we spend three hours mopping up, and then another two hours back at the station
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