My brief, early experience as a substitute teacher may have turned me on to a few of the things I needed that I never even knew I was looking for. The first was the idea that I could be a caretaker, a public servant - a contributing member of society. The second realization had to do with my relationship towards the rules. While I had always pushed back against the rules, at some point I realized that what I was looking for was not a situation in which there were no rules – I was looking for a situation with rules that I could feel justified in breaking.
I was never really into drugs, especially weed which just made me paranoid an anxious. To quote Lenny Bruce again “I don't smoke pot, and I'm glad because then I can champion it without special pleading. The reason I don't smoke it is because it facilitates ideas and heightens sensations-and I've got enough shit flying through my head without smoking pot.” I feel the same way. The few times, years ago, when I happened to be in possession of my own marijuana, I always thought it was much more fun to have the weed in my pocket than it was to actually smoke it. I didn’t like the feeling of being high. What I liked was the feeling of breaking the law. Now that it’s mostly legal, I’ll probably never smoke it again.
As a firefighter and paramedic, part of what helps me to deal with the stresses of the job is a complete lack of judgement towards people who would choose to endanger their own lives – whether it be through drugs, guns, crime, fireworks, motorcycles, or just poor life choices. As far as I’m concerned, if your own reckless behavior doesn’t endanger anyone other than you or the others who have consented to those same dangers, I’m fine with it. In fact, I’ll rush over with sirens blaring to give you the Narcan you need, or to apply pressure and a tourniquet to your pulsating nub of a hand on the Fourth of July. And I don’t care if you’ve learned your lesson or not. That’s up to you.
I’ve seen people make the argument that those who would kill or maim themselves through their own poor choices should think twice about the trauma they are inflicting on the poor first responders. I think they should consider the trauma inflicted on their children and families by their actions, but they don’t need to worry about me at all. I’ll be fine. Seeing bad things happen to people who asked for it is just the natural order of things. It does me no harm at all. When bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it – that’s when it starts to take a toll. Innocent children suffering from horrible diseases or the poor choices of their parents, responsible citizens killed by drunks and thieves, people who could just as easily be your own wife, mother, brother, or son. Those are the ones that sting.
I don’t know how many July 4ths I’ve worked at this point, but I’ve seen plenty of hand and eye injuries as well as quite a few house fires, dumpster fires, and brush fires all caused by fireworks. In fact, the structure fire chronicled in the opening scenes of this memoir was caused by an errant bottle rocket. I’ve had to risk my own life on several occasions to deal with the aftermath of fireworks. So, do I think they should be banned? No. I think that fireworks are part of America’s cultural heritage, and I like to try looking at things from a relativist perspective. How would I view a custom or tradition if I encountered it in another country? There are all sorts of customs around the world that bring with them a certain element of risk - whether it’s jumping off a tower with vines tied to your ankles in Vanuatu, or running with the bulls in Pamplona - there are plenty of examples of dangerous or questionable behavior that we celebrate under the umbrella of cultural relativism. So, I think America gets a pass for fireworks.
From my perspective, the only valid argument I have heard for abandoning our national love affair with fireworks is that they traumatize our veterans and others who suffer from PTSD. Apparently, the fake rockets and bombs we love to throw around on the 4th of July remind our vets a little too much of all the real rockets and bombs they encountered in service to our country. With a grand total of about 18 years of peace in our 247-year history, it’s difficult for a veteran of the American military not to have negative rocket and bomb associations. My first suggestion would be that we try to curtail the use of the real ones before we go banning the fake ones. “Well then”, you ask, “if you won’t do it for us and our vets, will you at least do it for the dogs?” No. I won’t. I think that fireworks are the price that dogs have to pay for getting to live in America.
Don’t get me wrong though. I’m not advocating for some kind of Libertarian free-for-all, either. I think that laws are necessary and useful. In fact, I think that most Libertarians are closet rule followers who can’t deal with the fact that there needs to be some flexibility in our system. Every Libertarian I’ve ever heard calling for the abolishment of some law or tax has been citing a way in which they think the rule was unfairly applied or ignored. They can’t seem to wrap their heads around the concept that we are to be tried by a jury of our peers, and we have flexibility built into our system. In the Libertarian mind, the fact that there may be exceptions (especially when those exceptions don’t directly benefit them) means that the rule needs to be abolished entirely. I think the genius of the American system is that we have a set of rules to guide us, and if we choose to ignore them, then we have a chance to explain ourselves. Of course, I’m not naïve enough to think that it actually works that way, especially if you are Black or brown or female or poor. But if we could remove race, gender, culture, and class from the equation, then selective enforcement would actually be something worth shooting for.
I've never had much patience for rules. I like to take each situation on a case-by-case basis and having hard-and-fast rules in place always seems to stifle any attempt at truly thinking your way through a situation. Plus, nobody loves a rule book like a dumb person loves a rule book. The biggest rule followers in any organization are invariably the least creative, most unimaginative thinkers. Whether it's The Bible, or the City of Tampa Construction Code, there's nothing that makes life easier for the dullard than being given a written set of instructions to follow.
The modern fire department is as rule-bound as any other paramilitary organization, but unlike other similar agencies, firefighting has a long history of creative rule breaking. I like to think that this goes back at least as far as 19th century America, when rival fire companies were known to brawl each other in the street over who got to put out the fire (and who got paid by the insurance company) while the building burned, unchecked behind them. What saves us today as firemen who frequently defy the rule book is that the outcome is easily measurable. Did the house burn down? Did the patient survive? Did anyone get hurt?
Every situation is different, and the rules as written often don't apply at all. If you can justify your actions, and the outcome is satisfactory, you can put it all down to being quick on your feet and responding to a dynamic situation. You just have to hope that your actions land on the right side of things when the history of the incident gets written. There are plenty of situations, at least in the moment, where it may be possible to see two distinctly different outcomes. Your “heroic” actions are just as likely to get you demoted as they are to get you Firefighter of the Year. It depends mostly on who wins the battle.
When I first became interested in a career in the fire service, I read everything I could get my hands on about firefighting, EMS, as well as the history and culture associated with both professions. In the days just after September 11th 2001, there was no shortage of stories about the fire service in the news. I remember reading a story about crews remodeling their stations without the knowledge or approval of their department. Years later, I learned of a fire house in New York that had added an entire story to the top of their station without any permits or approvals, so that off-duty personnel would have a place to hang out between shifts instead of going all the way back to their homes in Long Island or Westchester. This seemed, to me, like the type of culture where I would fit right in.
So, this is where I found myself in the summer of 2013, a newly-promoted Driver Engineer sent to one of the furthest outlying stations in the wilds of southeastern Hillsborough County. I had come from a moderately busy suburban station that averaged 8-10 calls per shift covering an area of about 6 square miles, to a rural station that averaged 1-2 calls per shift and covered an area of 125 square miles. We didn't do much, but when we did it was usually serious, and our backup was a long ways away. You could easily have a structure fire all to yourself for twenty or thirty minutes before another unit arrived on scene, and outside of the small town of Wimauma itself, there were no fire hydrants anywhere in our first alarm area.
In the Florida summer, Wimauma and its surrounding agricultural lands are the frequent site of large-scale brush fires that can burn hundreds or even thousands of acres. These fires may take anywhere from several hours to several weeks to control. The apparatus assigned to our station consisted of an engine manned by a crew of three firefighters, a one-man tanker truck carrying 3500 gallons of water, and an un-manned 4-wheel drive brush truck staffed by the firefighters from the engine as needed. When called for a brush fire, we usually just grabbed our gear from the engine and jumped on the brush truck with the tanker following in our wake.
We received a mid-afternoon call for a small grass fire at an address at least 10-12 minutes from our station. The three-man engine crew piled into the brush truck and pulled out of the station with the tanker close behind. On small outdoor fires such as this, we generally only dispatch a single engine or brush truck. In this case, due to the water supply issues, we had the tanker coming as well. As we got closer, dispatch updated us that the fire was "possibly" threatening a structure on the property. A few more minutes passed and they were advising us that this was a confirmed structure fire with at least one house burning and an unknown occupant level. With each update we discussed our plan of attack, but our strategies were limited by our choice of apparatus and the equipment that we had available to us.
We discussed the possible scenarios as we sped towards the rising column of thick, black smoke in the distance. On our truck, we had three people, one airpack (each brush truck only had one air pack on it), two sets of structural firefighting gear (our rookie had left his on the engine, only bringing his lightweight brush gear), and no handlines suitable for fighting a structure fire. We ran down the inventory coming behind us on the slow-moving tanker - one more airpack, 3500 gallons of water, a pump, and two 2" handlines that had probably never been pulled on a structure fire before. The beginnings of a plan started to come together. The Captain and I would suit up in our structural gear with him taking our one airpack while our rookie pulled the booster line from the brush truck to fight the grass fire. I would don the tanker’s airpack and the Captain and I would pull both of the tankers 2” handlines to fight the structure fire. As we discussed our options, I tried to stifle the grin on my face, but I couldn’t help voicing to my crew what I had been thinking since the start of this whole debacle. "This is gonna be awesome."
People often ask me, “When did you know you wanted to be a firefighter?”, and this is the story that I always tell. Of course, my decision had been made years before, but this was the moment when I finally knew for sure that the job was right for me. By any rational analysis, we were walking into a situation that had already gone wrong in just about every way possible. We were understaffed with the wrong equipment and not enough of it, we were facing a large and growing fire with a limited water supply, and any hope of help that we had was still a long way away. I saw all those hazards and recognized them for what they were, but I saw something else - opportunity. I knew that we were going to have to be fast, efficient, courageous, and inventive if we were going to have any chance at success. I knew that we weren’t going to have to worry about the rulebook. We could do whatever we wanted.
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As we approach the scene, we can see the chaos spreading out before us. A large, manufactured home is set well back from the road, surrounded by several acres of tall, dry grasses. Old cars and tractors are scattered throughout the thick underbrush. Everything in the yard is on fire. The smoke is staying low to the ground and moving rapidly from left to right as a strong wind pushes the fire to the northeast, past the house and into the tall pines of a large, wooded area to the east. The grass around the house has already burned, killing several dogs whose smoking bodies dot the clearings around the blackened yard. The fire is getting into the trees, and it may be spreading towards a cluster of houses to the north. It is hard to tell just how much of the interior of the house is involved, and it’s impossible to know whether there are any occupants inside.
My Captain dons the lone airpack on our truck, and our young firefighter grabs the booster line from the rear of our truck. Without an airpack of his own, he pulls his Nomex hood up over his nose and mouth to provide some small amount of protection from the blowing smoke. He takes a wide path around the house to the right, wetting the fire at its southern edge. He cuts a path across the head of the fire, allowing it to continue its burn to the east where it has already made its way into the woods, and he turns back towards the house to stop the fire from surrounding us and moving on to the north. My Captain radios our size-up to the other units now enroute to us, he requests the forestry service and a Sherriff’s helicopter to help with spotting the fire and directing units to stop its progress into the woods. I’ve worked with this Captain for four or five years now. He’s unflappable - a firefighter’s firefighter. I’ve been through all sorts of situations with him, and I’ve never seen him anything other than focused, calm, and determined. Not today. He’s screaming his commands over the radio.
The tanker pulls up and stops behind our brush truck, ready to supply his water to the pump on our truck (what we call “nursing”), but I jump up on his running board and tell him to put his truck in pump gear and be ready to charge his own handlines. I don the airpack from his side compartment, the Captain and I each shoulder one of the two handlines, and we begin advancing towards the house.
We are so accustomed to watching our rookies pull handlines that it’s easy to forget what it looks like when it’s done by an experienced firefighter. Today it’s being done in stereo, and the two firefighters, each with 200 feet of 2” hose on their shoulders, have about forty years of experience between them.
Watching a well-run fire scene can be like watching a slow-motion dance on the moon. There is a flow that happens when the members of a crew are all working together, when nobody needs to take direction from anyone else. We’re both taking large strides toward the house and throwing flakes of hose off our shoulders at each second step. The uncharged hoses cut two jagged lines through the yard behind us, and we march towards the house in what feels like perfect sync. We pay out the last of our lines, and there is no need for us to give the tanker driver the signal for water. He can see us, and he knows, when the last flakes hit the ground, that we are ready. He throws the levers to charge our lines and the loose bends of the empty hoses snap to attention, straightening our lines and pushing us further in towards the house.
My Captain moves right, towards the eastern side of the structure, where the grass fire has ignited the siding, burning the roof overhangs, and threatening to make its way up into the attic. In another minute or two, this whole house is going to be on fire. I move left, towards the front door to make an interior attack. With our nozzles set to a medium fog pattern we’re sweeping the area in front of us and knocking down as much fire as we can on our approach.
I make entry through the unlocked front door and the interior is surprisingly untouched by the chaos outside. There is some light, lingering smoke up high, but there are no signs of the fire having made its way into the attic. I give each room a quick check and everything is clear. The occupants either were not home, or they vacated prior to our arrival. I radio my size-up from the interior and announce that the primary search is complete. It’s eerily quiet in here. I can hear the distant approach of the Sherriff’s helicopter and the sirens of the other units responding to our location but the late summer air in here is still and dead. Through the bedroom window I can see my Captain knocking down what’s left of the fire on the exterior, and our rookie has finished making his way around the perimeter, stopping any further forward progress of the fire and saving the houses to the north of our location. The fire is still burning unchecked in the woods to the east, but that part is going to be somebody else’s problem. At least for now.
We make our way back through the yard, dousing any hot spots left, past the bloated bodies of the dogs, towards the tanker and its driver who we can see offering up cold bottles of water through the smoke. The other units have arrived, and there are crews in the woods beginning to attack what is now a full-blown forest fire to our east. The helicopter is circling high above, giving radio updates on the progress of the fire as the ground crews move themselves into position and chiefs in white shirts point their fingers and yell things to each other and into their radios. The Forestry Service will soon be cutting plow lines around the perimeter of the fire in a further effort to limit its spread. It’s going to be a long day for everyone involved.
For right now though, we can take a moment to sit on the bumper of the tanker with jackets off and bottles of water in hand, our legs swinging like three little kids on a park bench.