Engine 8 - Take One

Friday, February 16, 2007

I am supposed to ride with Engine Eight out of Messer Street tonight. We had a storm – the entire state is covered in ice. The road crews did manage to clear the streets during the day and salt them down, so I’m not so concerned about that, but everything else is sheer ice. It’s a bit foreboding, really. It’s freezing cold outside – the temperature went to about twenty-eight degrees during the afternoon, but the later it gets, the faster the temperature is dropping. The news says it will be about thirteen degrees by midnight. This ought to be interesting.

At about three-thirty, I get a phone call from Engine Eight’s Lieutenant, Ernie Young. He says that he can’t go in tonight, but that if I still want to ride, Captain McDaniel okayed me to ride with him and the rest of Ernie’s D-Group Crew – FF Bobby Alvarez, FF Steve Dulong and FF Todd Jones. I decide to go ahead and do it – I need to get this footage shot and get rolling.

I arrive at the station around five-thirty and ring the bell. I am escorted upstairs by one of the guys from Ladder Two, the second unit housed at Messer Street, and brought to Captain McDaniel’s office. As I enter the room, I can see that this man is a seasoned, veteran firefighter. FireMAN, more accurately. He is also an ex-Marine, from what I’m told. He has a gruff appearance at first and I’m already nervous to begin with. I know Ernie well – a good friend – and his absence here is felt in its entirety. I explain my project to the Captain and he lays down his rules. He will let me know if it’s okay to enter a scene. If he tells me to stay on the truck, there’s a reason – do it. If there is a fire, just say clear of the structure that’s burning and if I get cold or feel like I’m in the way, get back on the truck and stay safe. That’s the main concern for him – that I am not in harm’s way and I don’t get left at a scene inadvertently. And don’t miss the truck!!

Bobby Alvarez comes to the Captain’s office, greets me and brings me into the lounge area to meet the rest of the crew. I make sure that everyone knows I’m filming and no one has any issues with that, thank God. Jeff is busy making dinner in the kitchen area and the rest of the guys are going in and out of the lounge. Bobby and I chat while I set up my camera and get the light settings ready. Not long after, the bell tips and we jump and run to the truck. The call was for an elderly person who dropped a pot full of boiling water and her foot was burned. Captain McDaniel leads the crew into the building and while they assess the woman’s condition, he radios Fire Alarm to let them know we’ve arrived on scene. We’re told that the Rescue is en route and will be there shortly. I’m trying to film from the hallway, with residents walking through trying to see what’s happened and not wanting to go into the tiny apartment. It was already jam-packed with four firefighters, the victim and her neighbor. The Rescue crew arrives and brings two more firefighters, along with a gurney, into the mix. I follow as they take the woman out to the rig and get her settled in. When all is said and done, we get back into Engine Eight and head back to Messer Street. When we arrive back at the station, I get out of the truck and Captain McDaniel is looking me over, his brow furrowing in concern.

“That’s not going to work, Kid,” he says to me. “Your jeans are light, but not light enough. That dark coat is going to be a problem. We won’t be able to see you and if the police are on scene, they won’t know you’re with us. Come with me.” He walks me into the gear room. As we walk toward it, I turn and see Bobby, Todd and Steve smiling at me. I’m getting a little concerned. The Captain looks through a row of turnout coats hanging on a bar. “Okay, choose one of these two and lose the coat. Keep the hooded sweatshirt on under this, though. I don’t want you freezing to death out there and it’s gonna get colder before the night is out.” I look at the two coats he’s chosen and take one from a hangar. The damned thing must have weighed fifteen pounds. I try it on over my jacket and sweatshirt, my knees almost buckling underneath me. I walked back out to the apparatus floor where the three others are standing there, arms folded across their chests, grinning and snickering as I try to walk with this extra weight on me.

“Good God,” I say to them, “and this is just the coat? I can’t imagine a full set of turnouts.”

“A little heavy for ya there, Erin?” Bobby smiled at me. “It’s better than that dark jacket. We’ll be able to see you in that.”

“Come over here, Kid,” the Captain says to me. He’s standing at the passenger door of the Engine and is reaching for something by the Captain’s seat. He steps down from the truck with a huge flashlight in his hand. He walks over to me and sticks it into the top pocket of the coat. “Here, keep this in that pocket and if you need it, just hold this button down. That way it’ll just be there for you.”

“Thanks, Cap,” I say, trying to adjust to the extra five pounds he just dumped onto my left shoulder. I see the other guys grinning and walking up the stairs. I put the turnout coat onto the truck so I could just grab it and go, then proceeded to go back to the lounge upstairs.

Just after dinner, the bell tipped again and we answered a call for a young man with AIDS who was apparently suffering from pneumonia, or “High Five”, as the firefighters call it. This one’s a treacherous call – firstly because I made the mistake of putting the turnout coat on and then trying to pull myself up into the Engine. Thank God Steve Dulong was behind me – he caught me and pushed me up into the truck. As he got into the jump seat, I thanked him. (That was when I decided to leave the coat on my seat and wrestle into it as we rode to calls, rather than trying to pull myself up into the truck with it on again. As I learned, once I got used to the weight of it, it became easier to get onto the truck with it on.) We got to the house where the young man was and his Visiting Nurse met us at the door. Navigating that sidewalk and driveway were pretty frightening, the ground was covered in sheer ice. The Captain did keep an eye on me and told me that he’d let me know if it was okay to come in. I let them all go up into the man’s second-floor apartment before I ascended the stairs, my camera rolling. I waited at the landing, just where I would be in the Captain’s line of sight. He waved me in and I proceeded toward the door, not wanting to actually enter the apartment and jam things up. They administered oxygen to him and as I filmed this and listened to the questions they asked him, it reminded me of my friend, Alan, who died at the age of twenty-five due to complications from AIDS. It was breaking my heart, I felt terrible. I discovered that this guy was only forty-one years old. Then I heard the unmistakable bark of a small dog – that Napoleonic, large bark that sounded like a little kid trying to sound like an adult. I thought to myself, “who’s going to take care of that poor little thing?” My mind kept going back to how emaciated Alan had been when he died. He looked like he was ninety years old – his thighs only as big around as my forearms. It was terrible, and this poor bastard was on his way to looking exactly the same as Alan had. I tried to push the thoughts out of my head. I looked out the window in the hall and saw the Rescue Crew coming. I got myself out of the way and once they were inside the apartment, I went back outside. The wind was whipping – a sustained wind of at least twenty miles per hour, with gusts up to forty miles per hour. My lips immediately went numb and I was freezing – at least the parts of me that weren’t covered up by the two hundred pound turnout coat. I stood off to the side of the driveway on a small patch of concrete that was not covered in ice, waiting for them to come outside with the young man. As they appeared in the doorway, I could see that they were having trouble adjusting in the darkness. I switched on the ten pound flashlight and pointed it toward the stairs. One of the guys looked over and smiled, followed by a nod of thanks. I filmed as they brought him to the rig and Captain McDaniel was suddenly at my side. He asked me if I had caught what was going on – he answered a couple of questions for me, then we headed back to quarters.

We had a few other rescue calls, one back to the same building where we’d picked up the woman who had burned her foot. The second call was for a man who was having a bad asthma attack. The guys gave him a breathing treatment and we had to wait for what seemed like forever for Rescue One to make it there from the other side of the City. They really need more rescues, I’ve got to tell you. It was amazing. But, that’s why they dispatch an Engine to every rescue call – we got there a good ten or fifteen minutes before the rescue did and the guys had started treatment and at least made the man feel a little more comfortable. Once the rescue got there and took over, we got back into the truck and headed back home.

Just when I was about to pack myself up and head out, the bell tipped one more time. We got a call for a fire on Cranston Street at Potters Avenue. As we left for the call, I was being told that a young man had been bludgeoned to death at that very corner not three weeks earlier. His friends had set up a memorial for him at the telephone pole on the corner and apparently the rival gang that was responsible for his death had torched the memorial. When we got there, the fire had already burned out almost entirely, only embers glowing at the base of the pole. We got out of the truck and Captain McDaniel was immediately at my side.

“Now, be careful here, Kid,” he said. “There was a murder here, did they tell you?” I nodded. “Well, the gang that killed this kid probably torched his memorial. They could still be hanging around here, so keep your eyes peeled. Stick close and if there’s any sign of trouble, run for the truck.” That was the first time that I really got scared doing this. He was not kidding – not by any stretch of the imagination. I shook it off and filmed Bobby dousing the remainder of the embers with water. “Can you smell the gasoline?” I nodded to the Captain. “That’s why it burned out so fast. They doused it with gasoline and torched it. Once the gas burned off, it went out. Good thing, too.”

I left not too long after we got back from that call. I had gotten pretty scared with that one and it was ridiculously cold out there. Bobby walked me out to the parking lot and unlocked the gate for me. I ran my car for a couple of minutes and said good night to him.

As I drove home, I found myself thinking of that young man with AIDS and missing Alan – and Richard – and even Derek Meader. It was strange… when I told the Captain that I felt bad for the guy, he said, “you can’t let that stuff get to you, Kid. There is a lot of nasty, nasty stuff out there. If you let them all get to you, it’ll send you crazy.” He was right – I tried to let go of it.