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ANGELA
Flames are licking the walls and sweeping across the ceiling as I walk through the house. A smoke haze coats the room which makes it extremely difficult to see even with my mask. There are sobs coming from somewhere in the house, but I can’t place the location over the crackling of the flames and floorboards groaning at my every step.
We don’t have an abundance of time before the roof might collapse, so I need to be swift and find the survivors. I walk through the fire outside the far-left door and when I open it, I’m met with a mother yanking the t-shirt off her own body and placing it in front of her daughter’s mouth. She’s just trying to protect her from suffocation, and that’s the smartest thing she could do right now.
I look around and find a closet with some clothes.
“Put these on. You need to be covered as best as possible when we walk out this door or you will get burned.” I throw the clothes at the mother, and she hurries up and puts them on.
“Stay close to me. I’ll carry her and shield the best I can.”
I pick the young girl up in my arms, grabbing the teddy bear and try to wrap myself and my gear around her the best I can to prevent her from getting burned as we walk out of the door and into the rest of the house.
“We have to hurry!”
The roof is caving in above our heads and I’m trying to maneuver them out of the house as fast as possible. The daughter is pressing the cotton shirt to her mouth and coughing uncontrollably.
“It’s okay, darlin’. I grabbed your teddy bear.” I hand it to the little girl as we get outside and the EMT’s rush us, putting a blanket over the mother and daughter and taking them to the ambulance.
The reality of house fires is that there are many people that die in them because they cannot get out of the room they are stuck in. Not every bedroom has windows, and even if they do, they might not be big enough to get out of in case of emergency. In this case, there were smallwindows at the top of the room, and the flames were outside of her bedroom. Without me, they wouldn’t have survived. They had nowhere to go.
I might be the only female fire fighter within Grapevine now, but my partners trust me. They know I can do anything that they can do, and my gender doesn’t matter. My father taught me that we always check the house. There are mistakes he made when starting out, and he doesn’t want the department to ever let someone get missed in a fire check again. It still haunts him to this day. I think this is why he is so hard on me.
“Good job, Haddon. Now, come help us put the damn fire out,” Damon yells.
I rush over and take the back extremity of the hose, and the police officers try to keep the crowd forming away from the scene. I’ll never understand why people come over to where we are at and try to see things. It’s a fire. It’s not like they can’t see from a couple of houses down. Nosey Karens, I guess.
The roof collapses, the flames demolishing the structure and taking it to rubble. There is no salvaging anything inside. The fire dies down pretty quickly once the structure has collapsed. The teddy bear is the only thing that little girl is going to have left.
I have seen many things in this profession, but watching a family lose everything, it really makes you appreciate the things you have. More often than not, they lose their entire house, and that means that everything inside is compromised. I can’t imagine having to start all over from scratch.
After we get the equipment back onto the truck, and Damon confers with the local police department, I gaze over the scene. I hate to see someone lose everything. Hopefully, they own the house so they can at least get an insurance payout to get a new home.
The ambulance left with the mother and daughter inside and I hope they are going to be okay. If my sister Leslie was here, she would probably go to the hospital and check on them, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s easier if I keep my personal and work life separate, but this time it’s hard. Seeing that little girl, so terrified, it’s pulling on my heartstrings.
I’ve gotten good at leaving work at the depot. I don’t take whatever happened that day home with me. If I did, I would be stuck in an endless depression thinking of all the lives that have been lost due to fires. Unfortunately, it’s something we see often.
Damon hops into the front seat of the fire truck and the others quickly follow.
“Can y’all believe it’s already Christmas Eve tomorrow? I’m so ready for an extra day off.”
“Me, too,” Damon says. “The baby is finally sleeping through the night now.”
The drive back to the depot is filled with everyone talking about their family traditions and their Christmas plans. All I can think about is that poor girl and her mother not being able to spend Christmas at their house. I would really like to do something for them.
“Damon, do you guys have an opening in your duplexes?” I ask, leaning up to his seat.
“Of course. Would you like to give them a place to stay?” he asks.
I nod, knowing that even if the mother owned the house, it will be weeks, possibly even months before everything is settled.
When we pull up to the depot, he asks me to follow him, and he pulls out a key from his locker, and then writes something down on a piece of paper and hands it to me. “That’s the address with my phone number and the key. Have her call me when they get in tonight and let me know if they need anything.”
Damon is one of the best men I have ever had the privilege of knowing. He truly cares about the people in this community, and when my father told me about the duplexes the Jackson brothers bought to give misplaced families a place to sleep during the limbo phase after fires, it nearly swept me away. He isn’t my type like that, but more like a brother.
It’s time for shift change and I couldn’t be happier. I take my to-go bag out of my locker and change back into my civilian clothes before leaving for the day. If I hurry up, I might be able to catch them before they get discharged.
“I’ll see you in a couple days, Haddon,” Damon says.
