autobiograchical essayFire Fighting
...rom the outside at the fire. I also got to fight brush fires, which is basically walking through burning brush carrying an Indian Pack. An Indian Pack is just a Page 2 backpack water tank with a pump handle. Either that or I would ride on the back of the brush truck, but it didn’t matter to me I was fighting fire. At the age of seventeen I took what they call your basic thirty-six hour firefighter course. This taught me all of the basic things I would need to know so that I could safely and effectively fight a fire. Although there is no safe way to fight a fire you have to be as safety conscious as possible. In this course we were taught how to use the tools of the trade and how to effectively attack a fire from the offensive end. I learned about the behaviors of fire and how it can move from room to room. I also learned about the rate of heat exchange caused by the cooling of water and how it affects the stability of the environment in the room. It was about a month after I had completed my training that I got to go into my first working structure fire. On that day I was the second person to the firehouse after they had dropped the tones. I ran into the firehouse and put on my turnout gear, which consist of a flame retardant pair of boots, pants, and a coat. I jumped in the truck put my nomax over my head and started to put on my SCBA (self contained breathing apparatus)and then my gloves and helmet. Soon two other members had jumped in the back and did the same as we pulled out of the fire house. I was in a state of excitement and nervousness because I didn’t know what to expect. From shows on T.V. with things blowing up and just pure chaos everywhere, this is what I had imagined. I was wrong. When we pulled up on scene we hooked in our air, jumped from the truck and grabbed the first crosslay. We approached the door and proceeded in and began the preliminary search. When we started the search it was hot inside the house with my small one-hundred and twenty pound body carrying about thirty pounds worth of gear required to keep me safe. I also have a Page 3 twenty-five pound airpack strapped to my back with only a facemask keeping the smoke out and the fresh air in. This airpack only carries a limited supply of air, anywhere depending on the person and how hard they breath the time can be fifteen to thirty minutes of air. There was smoke everywhere and I could barely see the person in front of me. The two others and I searched room after room and could tell we were getting closer because it was getting hotter and the smoke was getting thicker. We made it to the last door in the hallway, as we opened it we saw an orange glow filling the dark smoky room. Once we had found this source we began to extinguish the fire with a fog stream of water, this insured proper heat exchange. While we were inside the were also crews outside working to help us. There was a crew in control of venting...