Dreams

Dream One

There was fire everywhere and the house was fully engulfed, Engine two had just arrived and there was reports of trapped victims and we could see that there was children's toys out in the front yard. This had risen some concern within us and we were rushing around to get all the hydrants connected. Ladder truck twenty-two had arrived not long after Engine two had pulled up and started their hydrant connections.

Captain Gogol had instructed that John, Lewis and I went in and did a left hand search before the building collapsed. When we got in the building, the fire was extremely hot and the smoke was so thick that we couldn't see our hands two feet in front of our faces.

"I found a couch!" Lewis yelled, as we found our way to the living room.

"Found a door and a victim!" He added as we quickly crawled our way in the bathroom. As we drug her out the door she looked at me and I saw it was Sierra, and from then on I tried better than my greatest and we moved her out of the house.

As we were making our way out flashover occurred and the floor began to feel more soft. We eventually had to start sounding the floor because it was becoming an entrapment hazard for us, but we eventually found our way back to the door which we came from.

"We got a victim!" John yelled, as we dragged her out of the building and revived her.

"Michel! My baby boy! Get my boyfriend, he's in the bedroom to the right of the bathroom! Please someone get him!!" She was yelling, as we went in for a second search for more victims.

"We'll find him ma'am!" I yelled over the sounds of the engines and the pass-alarms.

This is when we re-entered the building through the door side c, and as soon as we got to the bathroom the roof started caving in.

"We got to get out of here! This structure is no longer safe to search!" John yelled as we began to backtrack to the back door.

As we were making our way to the back door, the ceiling caved in and I managed to set off my pass-alarm. I was pinned beneath the fiery wrath of hell as it was burning my turnout gear.

"MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!" I yelled to command.

"L.U.N.A.R?" Command asked.

"Location unknown, Engine two, FireFighter Glass, Search and rescue, new bottles, some tools, and manpower."

"We are sending in a R.I.T, hold your position! Everybody off of chanel 7.12! We have a mayday!" Command was yelling into the radio.

I could feel my back cooking as debris was burning on top and I was losing my air supply, when my regulator started to vibrate rapidly.

This is when I ran out of air and I couldn't breath because of the airtight seal that was formed to my face by my mask. I knew that if I took my mask off that I would burn my throat due to the heat of the fire, and I also knew that if I didn't take my mask off that I would suffocate to death. So I took off my regulator, feeling the burning in my throat as the smoke and hot air entered, and not long after that did I start to feel sick and sleepy. When I did fall asleep, I never woke up again.

I "woke up" and there was my body being removed from the smoldering debris. My turnout gear was all burned and charred black just like my exposed skin, and as they were removing my body everyone was mourning the loss of a fireman and community member.

The burial ceremony was scheduled for the next day and I was the reason there was a retrieval of two firemen; not just one.

On each side of Engine Two and Engine Nine, there was three firemen dressed up for the sad occasion, and both fire engines rolled down the streets with a large crowd there to pay their respects to us...

At the funeral they did their gun salute and they buried me and the other fireman with red, yellow and orange roses.

Words to define:

Regulator/Demand valve: the piece that hooks up to a fireman's mask and allows the firefighter to breath clean air from his air bottle.

Pass alarm: A piece that goes off when it is sat off manually or after the fireman hasn't moved for about thirty seconds. It's a safety device that goes off that alerts other firemen of a downed fireman.

SCBA: Self Contained Breathing Apparatus. Its the thing that allows a fireman to breath in a fire.

PPE: Personal Protective Equipment

"Sounding the floor": hitting the floor making loud thumps to indicate if the floor is stable enough to walk on

"Soft floor": a patch or spot in the floor that has become unstable to walk on or do searches on.

"Left hand search": A search where the search party goes left, keeping their hands on the wall