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Weekend in Tulsa
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by Joe Munoz
SKREEE! SKREEE! SKREEE! The piercing, sing-song alarm reaches almost jet engine decibels and is heard a hundred yards away.
The shrieking tone is coming from a firefighter lying face down, trapped in a space barely as wide as a healthy man’s shoulders. His personal alert safety system, or PASS, has activated because he’s been motionless more than 30 seconds.
"Get in there, get in there! Be careful not to step on him!" the incident commander snaps as a fellow fire- fighter tries to dive through an opening narrower than a car window. Nearly forty pounds of bunker gear and an SCBA—a self-contained breathing apparatus strapped to his back—make this a daunting task.
As the first rescue worker gets in and tries to gently turn over his friend, now 200 hundred pounds of dead weight, a third firefighter squeezes into the bathtub sized space. Combining strength and leverage, the pair grunts as they get under the helpless man, lift him and push him through the tiny opening to safety.
Cheers go up as the once unmoving firefighter gets to his feet, removes his helmet and mask and takes a deep breath. "Great job!’ the officer shouts. "You get to sign the box," he tells the men in the confined space.
Parker Volunteer Fire Department was putting its members through a sweat-inducing exercise called the Denver Drill. "Man, that was tough picking him up and getting him out the window! There’s no room to move in there," one volunteer says grabbing a marker. Success means they can put their signatures on the plywood Denver Box.
Later, during a classroom session, detail is provided about the drill. It is based on a fatal incident that occurred in Colorado. "The firefighter was caught in a six by eleven storage room lined with filing cabinets," Lt. Mark Barnaby says. "He’d been overcome by carbon monoxide and was lying face down with his head by the window. It took fifty minutes to get him out."
After a quick briefing, more of the city’s 21 volunteers don bunker gear and take their turns in the Denver Box. This is a typical, 6:30 to 10 Tuesday night for guys who’ve made it their second jobs to take care of some of the emergency needs of Parker’s 3200 residents for free.
Terry Smith, a businessman, has been a volunteer firefighter more than 20 years. He explains their altruism this way. "There’s an instant gratification. You know instantly when you’re helping somebody," he says. "Whether it’s the simplest thing or a life-threatening situation, you know you’ve made a difference."
Like cities surrounding it, Parker’s pastures are making way for massive residences on multi-acre lots, and this provides more opportunity to make that difference. But a movie star-sized home with smoke pouring out of it can present a big problem for even the most well-trained volunteer department. "Lucas, Parker, Fairview and Murphy have houses that are so large we have to work together to provide enough resources to tackle the fire," Lt. Barnaby says.
Parker works especially closely with next-door neighbor, Lucas, responding to major calls together. "We have huge homes out here," says Lucas Fire Chief Jim Kitchens. (Kitchens is also a full-time Coppell Fire Chief.) "We have one under construction that will be ten thousand square feet. You approach something that size like a commercial structure fire. It’s a different attack plan then what you use on a 1700-square-foot, three-bedroom, bath-and-a-half house." Kitchens says more than 30 Lucas volunteers do their best to watch over the city’s 5000 residents.
With budgets in the range of $200,000 for each, both Parker and Lucas are well-funded by their city governments and have equipment and training other volunteer departments around the country could only dream of having.
Initial education is provided at Collin County Community College’s Fire Academy. An introductory, 72-hour course provides fundamental information. The next level, called basic, adds another 96 hours of training and gives volunteers a chance to battle fires in various settings, like a five-story office building or a hotel.
Ron Grotti, an instructor at the academy and a former Lucas Fire Chief, says the extensive training is crucial. Students may walk in thinking they know about firefighting science, but they soon learn even the simplest of extinguishing techniques—putting wet stuff on the hot stuff—can be fatal.
"We teach them to be aware of their surroundings," Grotti says. "Are they in a burning room with open windows, or is it sealed off?" Physics are at work behind this lesson.
"One cubic foot of water expands to 1700 cubic feet of steam when it’s sprayed on a fire. If there’s nowhere for that steam to escape, you will roast yourself like you were in a steam cooker," he says.
The dangers volunteer firefighters face are very real. According to the National Fire Protection Association, 54 volunteers were fatally injured in 2005. That same year 80,100 paid and volunteer firefighters were hurt in the line of duty. More than 800,000 volunteers make up the bulk (72 percent) of our nation’s fire- fighting force.
Keeping its alumni off the fatal statistics roll is why the academy’s coursework is so difficult. "The intensity of the training that volunteers get is the same intensity paid firefighters get. It’s the same type, the same instructors and the same material," Grotti says.
One tool students utilize is the Burn Building, a pyromaniac’s fireproof frustration. It’s a 12,500-square-foot, concrete and cinder block structure, built to be torched over and over. It has a three-story apartment building integrated in it, a five-story high-rise officer center, a two-story house, a one-story cottage, and a strip shopping center.
"Students don’t even get to see it their first 72 hours," Grotti says. It’s during the second phase of training that they get a taste of the flames. "That’s when we expose them to a live interior fire. We start slowly with very little fire under controlled conditions and good visibility."
The gentle intro¬duction advances quickly, since "fire under controlled conditions" is an oxymoron that exists only in training. The academy’s in¬¬struc¬tors explain an uncontrolled burn this way.
"In the actual fire you might fight, it’s as if you just close your eyes and walk into a strange house, a place you don’t know anything about," Grotti says. "That’s what you’ll be exposed to, except you’ll be in all your gear, you’ll be hot and you’ll be crawling."
Just like the first time seeing a cobra spread its hood behind the glass at the zoo, students clearly remember their initial encounter with fire in the Burn Building. Twenty-four-year-old Justin Bailey, a firefighter and Emergency Medical Technician with Lucas admits his heart raced a bit.
"Instructors wanted to show us the dynamics of how fire grows and what it can do," Bailey says. "They piled pallets and hay into the corner and lit it. We watched it grow and expand, watched the thermal layer with smoke billowing so thick you would wave your hand through it like water and we watched it completely fill the room with smoke," he says, still amazed by it.
Bailey spends a lot of time at the Lucas station, doing everything from researching firefighting methods to washing fire trucks. He says it’s worth it when a call comes in. "It’s a rush, the tones go off, you hear the words ‘structure fire’ and your mind starts preparing for what you need to do first," he says. "Your first priority is to save lives, then property."
Experience as an emergency medical technician for a private ambulance firm puts Bailey in those situations repeatedly, so logic keeps his mind clear. Not everyone is as logical and some rookies are swept up by that adrenaline wave.
Lucas Assistant Chief Ed Fleming, a Dallas police officer in his salary-producing career, says veterans keep an extra eye on the young bucks. "They get real gung-ho," he says. "It’s the same as police officers; the rookies are ready to save the world and they can make some bad decisions."
To avoid bad decisions, detailed response plans are laid out in both Lucas and Parker. "I’m amazed at how organized everything is and at how much effort and planning goes into everything we do," says 19-year-old Parker Emergency Medical Technician Joe Flowers. "Everybody has a job and everybody is important."
But sometimes the rush over¬whelms the training and the desire to be a hero lures young firefighters from their assigned task, something called "freelancing".
"Freelancing will get you in trouble fast," Assistant Chief Fleming says. "We have an incident commander at the scene. He tells everyone where to go, what to do." Acting indepen¬dently can be dangerous.
"If you go off on your own into a structure, no one notices you went in that window at a fire, or that you went under that dump truck to do some¬thing at an accident. That’s going to get you hurt. We’ve had to let people go because of that. They have to follow the system."
But it’s not just rookies who make potentially fatal mistakes. Fleming, a 13-year member of the Lucas department, is quick to point out his own errors to the newbies he teaches.
"We were in a structure fire about eight years ago. We went in too far before we started poking ceiling—tearing it down to be sure the fire wasn’t above us. Once we started fighting fire in the hallway, we started pulling ceiling in the area we’d already come through," he says, getting a bit uncomfortable. "We discovered the attic had gone up on us." The entire area over their heads had been burning.
"We could have been seriously injured or killed," he says. "It will sure make you remember next time to poke a hole in the ceiling to see if there’s fire above you before you go deep into a structure."
Post academy training—at least 20 hours a month—insures volunteers get this message repeatedly. Dousing a blaze, rescuing a trapped person or ripping off a car door with the 70-pound Jaws of Life is also only part of what is taught at weekly gatherings.
In Parker, despite what some fire- fighters may think, doing a belly crawl in full gear through a four-foot-wide box strung with a web of wires is training, not a technique meant to frustrate them.
"In an attic, the duct work used to cool the house is notorious for the outer shell melting and the metal inside coming down like a slinky," Firefighter Raymond Mayer says. "We get hung up in that, so we learn to back out, disentangle and stay calm. If worse comes to worse, we carry wire cutters to get us out."
Ongoing classes also remind firefighters to treat the most valuable firefighting tool, them¬selves, with great care. "Firefighters have to remain aware for their own safety, aware of things like their body temperature," says Parker Fire Chief Mike Sheff.
The bunker gear that emer¬gency responders wear is designed to keep heat and debris out. Unfortunately, it also keeps heat in. The coats and pants are composed of three layers; a thermal layer to protect the firefighter from burning, a moisture barrier to keep steam out and a puncture-resistant outer Kevlar layer. A flash hood is pulled over the head before the helmet and mask go on. Thick gloves, boots and a bottle of air finish the protective ensemble. With the body’s natural cooling points effectively under wraps, heat stroke becomes a liability.
"A fire will exceed a thousand degrees at the ceiling and several hundred degrees at the floor," Sheff says. "Within the bunker gear, you’re cocooned. It’s more than a hundred degrees in the suit. As you exert yourself, your core body temperature rises. Your energy is depleted faster, you dehydrate because you’re sweating out faster and the body is trying to compensate."
Sheff says a recent study indicates a firefighter’s core brain temperature can rise by several degrees, yet another situation that can turn a rescuer into the one needing rescue.
Despite the risks, dozens of Lucas and Parker volunteers still jump at the chance to respond to calls for help. "I figure if I expect somebody to run into my house to rescue my kids from the flames I should be willing to do the same thing," says firefighter David Palmer, a computer programmer from England.
Palmer is one of many volunteers who has taken his formal fire science training to the Advanced level, more than 550 hours of total academy time that could allow him to go to a paid department if he chose.
What started as a noble cause for the man who grew up near William Shakespeare’s home in England, has become a way of life. So much so, he’s the permanent designated driver wherever he goes.
"I gave up drinking. I like a beer as much as the next guy, but you can’t go on a call if you’ve been drinking," he says in his British accent. "You’re a danger to yourself and a liability to others. I found myself thinking about having a beer in the evening, and not, because I didn’t want to miss a call."
Sacrificing some things is worth it to Palmer and the other volunteers.
"People often talk about the brotherhood of firefighters," he says. "There is that kind of connection. We don’t live in each other’s pockets, but today the guys you go into a burning building with might pull you out, or you might pull them out. You depend on each other."
That brotherhood brings more than a protective bond. It’s a family and families give each other grief. "We have a good laugh together," Palmer says.
Being a Brit makes him an easy target. "I take a lot of leg pull over my accent and the chief tells me I’m the only firefighter who carries a torch into a burning building. A torch is what we call a flashlight in England," he says. "Joining the department you’ve got to be able to tolerate and give a lot of leg pull."
That leg pulling may not extend up the ranks however. When asked if the heads of the Parker and Lucas departments were ever given a rough time about their names—Chief Kitchens and Chief Sheff—all it drew was a blank.
Come on guys! They could open a greasy spoon, Firefighter’s Five Alarm Café. Or maybe they could do a cooking show called If You Can’t Stand The Heat...
Anybody? Hello? Is this thing on? Ah well, perhaps culinary humor isn’t the volunteers’ strong point. The citizens of Lucas and Parker should be thankful that rescue work is. |
