FIRE FIGHT

12:15. The fire is announced with the deafening ear piercing screech of a siren. They only have 5 minutes to arrive and throw themselves into the danger zone.

Captain James surveys the crew while standing on the kitchen door’s threshold. A dozen oversized men and two stocky women, who were all previously slumping on couches fighting boredom and playing cards now act; almost pounce. Out of the yellowing, messy staffroom, littered with half eaten meals and open newspapers, they jump out in a split hair’s second. In an instant they shed clothes and protect themselves in thick uniforms and astronaut looking boots. Apart from the precision of their team work, this is their only protection between flesh, and impending melting flames, and toxic plumes of combusted fuel.

12:18. In less than three minutes they’ve dressed and now scurry into the glimmering red engines. They drive franticly on the roads moistened and made slippery by an afternoon deluge of autumn rains. All taste the dampness and coolness in the air which bursts through their open windows and hits their faces full of stoicism. Rain has cleansed the roads but not their mixture of fear and excitement. No one says anything. Concentration is too intense. No one needs to say anything. Without a word they all know precisely what needs to be done.

Riding shotgun, Captain James looks back at them. He sees a shared determination chiselled in each others’ eyes. All psyche themselves up to act without thinking too much. Action is needed, not words and feelings. Sometimes it’s just necessary to do your job and not get lost in a maze of thoughts that threaten to immobilize them from what they have been mercilessly trained for. Training mechanized and bound them with a set a habits. Everybody trusts the others implicitly. Each individual knows exactly what’s required by each and every one of them in these situations. It as if they all are an army of robots full of impenetrable steel armour; mechanized by group precision. Captain James is proud of every single one of them.

12:19. The radio announces,

“Three children under five, two girls 3 and 5 and one baby, are trapped inside a burning townhouse. The mother escaped with severe burns. No others believed to be trapped. The fire’s spreading to buildings alongside the initial building.”

There’s silence; the tense, deafening kind. That determination set in their eyes and burrowed in their creased foreheads collapses, to reveal unspoken despair given away by those same eyes.

A 4WD Toorak tractor sits idly in the middle of the road. Other cars stop or part like mechanical waves, as soon as they hear the siren. Not this one. There’s always one. Nothing to do, except sit and wait. Seconds seem like minutes. The driver looks blankly at the crew. They wait and shuffle in their seats.

Captain James checks his watch and expels a blast of air gruffly. Seconds seem like minutes. Captain James taps his huge hands on the car window. Each tap gets harder. Tension rises. Time passes. Then he thumps the window, almost punching it. Captain James pushes his top body out the window. He belts out,

“Bloody hell mate. Get out of the bloody way. This is an emergency, not a Sunday drive in the country.” At last, they move out of the way.

Navigating swiftly and expertly through laneways off the main road, they attempt to make up the loss time. As they approach the fire scene, they smell the smoke polluting the damp night air. In front of them is the Sydney terrace. Flames engulf it. Windows shatter. Heat vibrates out. Flames leap. The fire feeds greedily of the oxygen entering through shattered glass. At last, they have arrived. 12:20. Tyers screech as loud as their former silences. Their reaction time target has been reached successfully, less than five minutes.

Captain James slaps each one hard on the right shoulder. It would hurt if they weren’t padded up in uniforms. They seem invincible, at least on the outside. They leap out of the shining engines and then some part the sea of crowds, which swarm after hearing screams and the unmistakable crackling of leaping flames. Other fire fighters find the water mains and ready the hoses first, and then oxygen tanks, and finally masks and helmets.

12:23. They’ve made it in less than ten minutes. Captain James, the burliest amongst them, towers over them and instructs the gathered circling team on the plan of action in an almost bullish, rough, baritone voice. Whatever he says goes. There are no questions. They hang on his every word and gulp each up like birds around a feeding trough. Captain James huge hands points and gruffly announces, in his hint of a remaining Scottish accent,

“Great work team. Our response time is as sharp as knives. Great job, guys.” Everyone eyes alertly surveys the scene.

“The mother is out. Very severe burns. Recovering in the ambulance. No chemicals on premises. It’s threatening the adjacent buildings. Rob, Carla focus on the villa number 5. Bette and Ray take 4 two and focus on the outside facing the street. I’m the only one going in. Before you say anything, I know it’s against procedures. Just don’t bloody tell anyone, ok?  It’s a death trap and no other lives need to be lost. Someone has to save the children though. It’ll be a few seconds, in and out. It’s too late to save the property. We have to save the ones next to it. It’s now or never. Do your job. We’ll do great. You’re the best team I’ve ever worked with.”

His shoulders are as wide and resemble besser blocks in their thickness. His neck is rubbery and hard like tyres. His hair classically ginger, like his warrior and gruff Scottish ancestors, is shaved close to his skull. It’s slightly recedes from ten years in the department and from stress in moments like these.      

A heavy echo of collapsing wooden floors reverberates throughout the street. The crowd gasp and fall back. All the firey’s follow the captain orders, move a meter away from the leaping flames and do their respective tasks. Captain James moves the closest to the engulfed townhouse. Time seems to drag too slowly. In reality, seconds is the difference between life and death. All of the crew are behind him and seem smaller as he glances back ensuring they are following his order. It’s not necessary with this crew to check whether his orders are followed, even the wrong ones.

Ahead he sees two duplexes, previously non-descript Sydney townhouses, that five minutes ago sat sitting blistering in the autumn heat. Patios are out the front in shrunken courtyards where people sat sipping cold drinks watching the city life stroll past. Now the situation is reversed, because the whole street and more people focus hard on the fire hypnotised, trying hard to hide their titillation. Splits seconds pass. 12:25

There it is, apparently ugly but strangely beautiful. It seems to pulse like a giant heartbeat, Captain James thinks. Before you see it, you feel it from metres away, the pounding heat lapping at you, forcing you to sweat profusely. It cuts through the air like razors and thrives on oxygen and is uglier like a cancer, or an orange hued monster feeding of life and taking others in the process. He thinks of running. This impulse shudders throughout his body. It’s his first instinct, as he walks through the invisible wall of heat beating out from the monsters sources. In another contradictory way, he secretly and guiltily considers how he loves its intensity, admires its strength, and feels humility at its potential devastation.

To him it’s almost divine in a warped way. But other thoughts pop into his mind and he sees it. The blackened charred corpse of two of his men: Tom and Ron. It was a month ago. Somehow he still vividly sees them dead, as clear as the fire now hungrily bursting out. Their bodies were burnt beyond recognition; crispies, the fire-fighters call burnt corpses. Now he brushes his nose; thinking he could still smell the charcoal and burnt flesh of their remains. With them he loss great mates, who were with him as long as he had started in the department-10 years now.

Captain James’s thoughts fall back when he forces his face way from the fire.

The funerals were the worse. James didn’t know what to say to their wives and children, accept sorry and what great men they were. Words weren’t enough, then or now. It was the first real fire since their funeral. On the bitumen his feet seem to stick to the ground and he tries to move physically and away from memory. Yet, he can’t.

Any other day it would be suicide to jump into this fire alone without a partner. He tries to push himself forward. His frozen in the heat. Sweat beads fall along his brow and he wipes them. Each breadth seems deeper and he begins to choke on his own fear. 12.27.

Then another image burst through his mind. Children. There are children here trapped. He thinks of his Rachel at breakfast this morning. He sees or smiling eyes and sees her hand reaching out to grab him while she eats her muesli that he insisted she obediently eat; that he smiling and wordlessly poured for her. Remembers her clean scent and little hand twisting to hug him around his huge neck and says, “Good Morning Daddy, I want to be like you when I’m big. Can I be a hero too?” Then he wanted to say I love you Rachel. He didn’t because the words got stuck in his throat. He wants to see her again, make amends, say everything he felt. Couldn’t stand leaving her when she is only eight, when there are so many more memories to live and gather up.

But he does it. He does it for her, his Rachel. He walks into the fire. He forgets that he thinks it’s a monster, or waking nightmare, tempting you always to run away. It was always his first instinct to run, though he would never admit it. Despite his thoughts, he forgets to walk and runs into the blazing building. Fear still pumps through his body. It’s become something else now- courage.12:30.

As he enters the building, he gulps heavily from his oxygen tank. Smoke is thick and black making visibility nil. The Captain reaches out his hand, but cannot see it in front of him. He does see his daughters face shining up at him brighter than the fire surrounding him. This mission is to find the children, not save the building: it’s too late for that. Flashing before him is blinding bursting windows splintering and shattering in the furnace. Screams outside sound like whispers in here,

“They’re in there. Get them save my children! Please. Please. I love them. I need them.”

Must be the kids mum, he tells himself.12:32

This thought is answered by a thud echoing like an earthquake as the top floor collapses.

And the remaining skeleton of the stair case crumbles. If they are upstairs there is no way to reach them. It’s to late now. Is this another disaster? He should leave now. Save him-self. It was sheer luck he wasn’t standing underneath the collapsing section of the building. At least he followed the procedure of staying close to the walls in case there was an internal collapse. He can’t go now.

 Tomorrow he would have to see himself in the mirror, and he wanted to look back, and see pride in his face, and later in Rachel’s over breakfast. At least this way, if he lived he could live with himself.12:33.

At least, he wasn’t sacrificing others in the team. He rationalised it was ok to sacrifice himself, though. Shining his torch in the fire free areas didn’t spot anything except melting synthetic furniture and dripping drapes. That’s when he heard it, “Back window.” It sounded like John. Impossible. John was beyond the grave. 12:34.

Still it was his voice which was louder than the fire, if it only lasted seconds. In seconds he was at the back door and window. There they were. Crouching in the back porch corner, were the two children and baby cradled by the girl. Miracously they were unburnt, and trying to push open a locked back window. With his axe he shattered the window. The children faces were engulfed in panic still. In each arm he carried them out the back. Next he heard the fire spreading throughout the downstairs. Their mother struggled out of the back of the ambulance, rushing towards them as he moved toward the safety outside and placed them in their mothers trembling arms. She cried I love you, over and over again.12:35.

Strangely as James looked back to the burning shell, he saw an odd looking bird that looked black as a crow and big as an eagle flying from behind the building toward the moonlit sky. All he could think of was tomorrow morning. Instead of demands he would pour Rachel her favourite cereal, cocoa pops. And this time he would definitely say three simple words, “I love you.”

By Allen  Davies.