It was a cool crisp Saturday morning in the month of June, about 5:30 am.  Never thought my life would change forever on that Thursday morning.  I woke up to the sound I hate hearing and I also love hearing. BEEP BEEP BEEP. Before I even heard the details on the call, I jumped out of bed and had my pants and shirt on before I even knew what I was doing.  I remember stopping and hearing over my pager, “fully engulfed structure fire.”  My heart started racing faster than it was before.  This all happened over a span of 10-15 seconds.  I picked up my pager and ran into my dads’ room and yelled for Sheila, my dad’s girlfriend that is also a fire fighter and a first responder.  I yelled, “let’s go”. She was only just getting out of bed.

 Full of adrenaline now, I sprinted into the kitchen and grabbed the keys for the Yukon and jumped down the stairs. Threw the laces in my boots and some how put them on while trying to run.  I flung the passenger door and jumped in while closing the door.  I started it and waited for Sheila to get in the truck.  After about 20-30 seconds she came flying down the stairs and ran outside and jumped in.  She threw it in gear and down the road we took off. Pushing about 60 at the time, my pager started beeping again.  It was the second page, this time it said there was someone still inside. I remember looking over at Sheila and seeing her face go white.  Just crowned the last hill on my road and I saw the horrific dark smoke. Got a little closer and my heart dropped. There was about a 10 ft flame going over the top of the 30 ft tall trees. We turned off my road and headed down E.

All I could see in the mirror was thick dark black smoke.  The smoked covered the whole road and was sitting on Beautiful Lake.  Our Yukon has a 6.2 litter LS motor that puts out around 405 ponies and she had it pinned right to the floor. Speedometer said 50, 60,70,80,90. Made it to hwy 8 in no time. Turned towards Range and had the petal to the metal.  Made it there in just a few minutes, after racing down 8 like it was a video game.               

 As we pulled into the hall Engine 1, Tanker 1, and our mini pumper raced out of the hall. The door to the hall was already open so I booked it out of the Yukon and ran inside. I never really practiced putting my gear on fast before, so I had a little difficulty.  After about a minute or so we were back on the road and heading in the direction we just came from. Nice thing about our Tank 1 is that it leaks water going down the road so it’s always easy finding where the fires at if you’re after the tanker.          We raced back down hwy 8 like we were in a Fast and the Furious movie.  The smoke was so thick it. We came rocketing down the driveway and I bailed out before we even stopped the truck.  I threw my jacket and helmet on and off I went.  Engine 1 was all ready for the drop tank and had a 2 ½ hose all laid out with a Y piece on the end.  I helped grab the drop tank off Tanker 1 and set it up behind Engine 1.  As soon as the drop tank was down Tanker 1 was ready to start dumping.  I threw the suction hose from the engine into the drop tank and within a couple seconds we were pumping water.  I completely forgot about the fire and looked behind me. 

The house was completely flashed over, flames shooting out every window and through spots on the roof.  Chief told me and another guy to take a 1 ½ off the truck and start spraying down the south side of the structure.  In about 2 minutes we had 2 100ft sections out and water flowing.  I was attacking the fire from the southeast side of the building.  I had so much adrenalin pumping through my body I didn’t feel any of the heat coming off the fire and I was a good 10 ft from the side of the house. 

I still remember seeing a concrete cat sitting by the wood stove inside the house.  By now most of the floor fell into the basement.  There was only about 3ft of the floor coming off the south wall that was still attached, but that little concrete cat was still holding on.

 After about 5 min, I saved about half the south wall from the fiery hell.  The whole north side was still flashed over. I went to the east side of the structure to see how everything was going over there.  Someone was dragging a 2 ½ inch hose off the truck and had the nozzle all the way open.  The pump operator charged the line and the guy went flying about 5 ft off the ground, holding on for dear life.  Reminded me of someone riding a bull at a rodeo.  After about 10 seconds of holding onto the hose and taking out about 3 other people, the hose was finally discharged.  After watching the rodeo on the east side of the building I drug the hose over to the west side.           

There was a 10 ft tall deck that was on fire.  I gently sprayed it down with a fog pattern, not trying to damage it even more than it was.  The whole west wall was gone and fell into the basement.  By now most of the fire was out, other than the basement.  With 2 2 ½ inch and a 1 ½ inch hoses we flooded the basement. Once I got to tired to keep spraying the hose someone else took over and I went on the search for water bottles. 

I walked past a bird feeder that was about 15 ft from the house on the south side of the structure.  It was a big puddle on the ground, and I couldn’t believe I was sitting that close to the fire and didn’t even feel the heat.  It looked like the bird feeder was boiling on the ground from all the heat.  I soon wandered over to the Engine and found water sitting on the rack, slammed down 4 water bottles.  I sat down on the front of Engine 1 and thought to myself, this is what my life is all about. Fighting fires. 

After sitting down for a couple minutes to catch my breath, I put my helmet and jacket back on and wandered to the west side of the house.  The door leading into the basement had water leaking all the way around it, from people flooding the basement.  The fire was pretty much put out by now, still a few hot spots here and there.  The wind kicked in a little and pushed all the smoke out of the area.  \

While looking around for a while, I completely forgot someone was inside that house.  Still not sure how I forgot someone was still there.  One crew started searching for the body and I wasn’t sure I could watch it all happen.  I called my dad a few minutes later and told him to come pick me up.  I started walking up the driveway to the road.              

The hardest part of that day was seeing the women’s kids.  I couldn’t imagine what was going through there minds.  All I could manage to stutter out was “sorry for your loss”.  We never made eye contact. They never said anything back.  While walking up that long driveway, I couldn’t stop thinking what I would do if that was my dad in the house right now.                                            

  To this day I still can picture seeing their faces, blood shot eyes, and rivers of tears running down their face.  Some things like that will haunt me forever.  But at the end of the day, I did my best and so did everyone else on that fire scene.  Did our best to rush to the hall and fast as we could, throw our gear on like its nothing, and jump in the truck and tear out of the parking lot. We did everything we could to try and put out the fire and save her life, but its typically almost impossible if you’re in a rural area.  But that doesn’t mean we still don’t try to make a difference at the end of the day.  Making that one small difference in the world is what I crave.

  I have seriously been thinking about being a full-time fire fighter out of high school.  I recently enrolled at WITC for Fire Fighting 1, which is the bottom-line class for firefighting.  I’m also hoping to take Firefighting 2 and hazmat.  I’ve also been thinking about taking EMS this fall.  Then hopefully I can take EMT my senior year.  So, by then I’ll be set for wanting to join a full-time department somewhere in the cities.  I’ve been really thinking about going to a big city like Madison or the twin cities, somewhere to get some more action to improve my skills.  Only way to be a better firefighter is to have more experience, not class work. I couldn’t imagine having a full-time job that helps people every single day of the year.