Some notes from The Wild Dog Archives. From October 3, 1990. – JDW
I’m standing there… trying on asbestos jumpsuits and asbestos helmets and asbestos boots and asbestos gloves and an air pack and a gas mask.
Still, I am thinking something is missing.
What, no asbestos underwear?
Somebody hands me a “Hold No Harm” form, which The City seems to think will protect the local coffers while I attend Fire Academy. Didn’t drop out of law school for nothing. I signed the damn form. If I am merely injured – trust me – I’ll still sue.
Somebody should definitely have stepped in and stopped me from doing something this stupid.
If I die, I am coming back from wherever totally charred humans go when their bones turn to briquettes. And I’ll put razor blades on the poles first responders slide on down to the firetrucks.
You know the poles I mean.
We are welcomed by a man in uniform. Of course, we are.
I myself look good in a uniform. I also look good with many days off and a secure job with great benefits and a generous retirement plan.
“Next, we are going to have you put on a turn-out – a flame retardant suit – and have you race up two flights of stairs in a burning building, find the dummy in the smoke and race back down with her – all 107 pounds – on your back.”
HA! I’m thinking, no, you’re not. No way. ‘Cause then I’d be the dummy in the smoke.
Call me crazy, but I have a predisposition against flames. I tend not to rush toward them. It’s genetic. I come from a long line of folks who retreated from danger. It’s familial. My parents, bless their hearts, taught me to head in the opposite direction.
The guy is still talking.
Don’t pay attention to a couple of gruesome, but nonetheless amusing, incidents that have occurred with this organization in the past. Ah, the apocryphal anecdote never fails.
“Today, there will be no mistakes,” he continues.
I am heartened. Can’t tell you just how much.
Okay. A lot.
“Thirty-two firefighters have died in the line of duty in this city.”
He might have waited until after the day’s activities before sharing that tidbit.
I am thinking, you hardly ever meet an old firefighter.
The first event is Ladder Climbing.
“We’ll be going up to the top and then doing a 360-degree turn.”
We will? You can’t even see the top, which seems to disappear into a cloud.
The instructor offers a comforting thought to me and my partner, Linda.
“There nothing to be scared of.”
It’s a 100-foot ladder.
I let Linda go first. Nice ass. Focus!!
“Can we go higher?,” I hear her ask, as she starts climbing.
Extrication was cool. We got to use the Hurst Tool – known as The Jaws of Life – to take the roof off a puke-green 1975 Mercury Marquis. These powered pryers exert 12,000 pounds of pressure. That’s six tons for the mathematically challenged..
The instructor explains, “I’ve never seen anything withstand this machine.”
Later. “It will go where it wants to go. Don’t fight the tool. Go with it.”
Always good advice. Don’t fight the tool. The tool rules.
Next… The LIVE BURN ROOM. Frankly, that’s three words I have never before seen amicably linked together. Redundant, you say? LIVE BURN sounds oxymoronic, don’t it?
“Temperatures can reach 2,000 degrees inside a burning building,” the instructor says.
That’s about 1,928 good reasons not to enter one, I say.
It’s dark. Except for the flames. It’s smoky, too.
My face mask is fogged up.
I don’t have medical insurance.
“Okay, get down on your knees,” we’re ordered, “and crawl towards the fire.”
I let Linda go first.
“Jack D.”
“What?!?!”
“You forgot the hose.”
Right.
Next is a lecture about why it isn’t stupid for firemen to knock out all the windows and chop a huge hole in the roof.
Sometimes they look like they are trying to destroy the house instead of saving it.
This is called… ventilating.
So, we are given an ax and directed to chop a huge hole in a roof. Real axe, simulated roof.
“One of the best things about this job,” says a younger member of the faculty, “is you can break crap.”
I went first.
During Apparatus Familiarization, which is a really funny term if you think about it and I have, we get a tour of one of the newest reddest fire trucks, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I ask if I can take it for a spin.
They say “No.”
Well, then, can I just hit the siren a couple of times?
We learn maybe 70% of all fire runs are for medical emergencies… car wrecks, baby deliveries, drug overdoses. All of the firemen are Emergency Medical Technicians. Paramedics. Men and women we can count on.
Next..what we’ve all been waiting for… the SMOKE MAZE IN THE BASEMENT.
Seven minutes in there. About the time it takes to jog a mile. [I was much younger. – ed.]
A lifetime, it might as well be. The remainder of one perhaps.
We step through a trap door and take a ladder underground. Where we end up is a place you wouldn’t hope to find your worst enemy.
I let Linda go first.
The instructions are to put your right hand on the wall and your left hand on the firefighting student in front of you. Heheheheh.
Listen to our leader. He’ll tell you when to turn, when to duck, etc.
I am thinking I’d like to know more about ‘etc.’
I’ve got a gas mask on, a helmet, flaps over my ears. And I can’t hear a word the man is saying.
I can’t see doo-doo.
Then my right hand loses the wall.
And the person under my left hand moves off.
And I am alone.
By myself.
Can smell oil burning billows of smoke.
I suck it up and tell myself, “If Linda can do this, then so can I.”
Then she came back and led me out.
At the end of the day, there was something of a final exam.
I am part of a Search And Rescue Team.
We’re supposed to rush into a burning building, run up a couple of flights of stairs, find the dummy in the smoke and carry her out to safety.
I went first.
But – surprise! – there was no second day at firefighters’ school for me.
That’s right.
Linda’s on her own.