O Fortuna

It was Story Night at the big campout I attend every year, and a fair-sized group were begging for a firefighter story. I always dread these moments, because this usually means they haven’t heard any of my stories yet and expect that I will tell about something inspiring with a fairy-tale ending. Sometimes I do. I can always talk about the time I rescued a parakeet from a house-fire, but that only eats up about 30 seconds. The bird looked pretty dead but, since I wasn’t otherwise engaged and have a soft-spot for critters, I blew oxygen in his beak for awhile and did a little CPR. After a few minutes he woke up seeming none the worse for wear, the owner wept with gratitude and I earned a new nickname. I always feel compelled to add the part about another bird I pulled out of an apartment-fire that, sadly, didn’t make it and ended up getting tossed in a dumpster. It’s like the avian-version of the opera Carmina Burana, you know, Fortune vs Misfortune.

Studies have shown that firefighters who successfully navigate long careers - without resorting to self-medication or experiencing excessive emotional/psychological/marital difficulties - are able to exercise a wide variety of coping mechanisms as needed, more so than most people. This makes us uniquely equipped to process some crazy shit. However, what we end up thinking of as “normal” or “funny” or “perfectly appropriate to say at your spouse’s office party” is why we eventually realize it’s often just best to spend most of our off-duty time with other firefighters.

Back at the campout, I gave them a choice of a horrific or more light-hearted story. Light-hearted was the unanimous choice, so here is what I chose:

I was working at a four-person Engine Company in NE Portland and we were pulled out of bed about 5:00 AM for a house fire. As we arrived, there was fire blowing out of the front living-room window, but it seemed contained to that room. I was driving, so I sent water to the hose-line that was quickly pulled to the front door by one of the crew. I then noticed the other jump-seat firefighter was grabbing our 24-foot extension ladder off the side of the engine. Since he normally would be backing up his partner on the hose, I figured it must have been pretty important, so I took one end and followed him around the side of the house and found there was a very large, naked man having a meltdown on a little piece of roof over the kitchen door. I told my crewmate to go ahead and help get the fire knocked down and that I could deal with Naked Guy. I climbed up to him and told him to follow me down the ladder, but he refused and pointed to the small window he had come out of, screaming that he wasn’t coming down without his girlfriend. Apparently, they were both sleeping upstairs and, in their confusion about where all the smoke was coming from, ended up walking right down the chimney, so to speak. He bailed out of the window but she ended up collapsing and falling to the bottom of the stairs. At this point, smoke started pushing pretty hard out of the window, so I used my very best crisis-management communication tools (swearing and lying) and quickly talked him down the ladder, his butt inches from my face all the way down. With both of us back on the ground, I ran around to the front to find that the rest of the crew had already put out the fire and rescued the woman. Other fire-companies were starting to arrive, neighbors were pouring out of their homes and medics were starting to work on our victim while the boyfriend ran around the scene for quite a long while, still naked.

At this point of the “light-hearted story” I could see I was losing my audience. In my mind, it was Bill Murray playing Naked Guy and the audience should have been chuckling at his antics, but they didn’t share my vision. I decided to see it through to the end and continued. The fire had been burning out the window and under the eaves, so a crew was sent to check the attic spaces to make sure it wasn’t hiding out, waiting to embarrass us later by bursting back to life in what is known as a “rekindle.” The chiefs on scene were showing us lots of love and promising to put us in for an award. As we drove back to the station, basking in our glory, the dispatcher came on the radio and sent us back to the same house along with the rest of the original assignment. We hadn’t been gone 5 minutes and the house was on fire again. As we turned the corner, smoke was pouring out of the second-story and we started all over, except this time there was no damsel in distress, no naked guy on the roof for comic relief, just verbally abusive neighbors who minutes earlier were throwing flowers at us. We found out later about the unwritten rule that says even if you rescue two people and knock the fire down before any other help arrives, if the house catches fire again before you can get back to the station, there will be no medals. Which I think is bull-crap. I guess all you can say sometimes is “O Fortuna.”