Chapter Ten

Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for. I had no sooner written that last sentence than the tones went off and we had a dandy. Triple winner -- a wreck with passenger injuries, a vehicle fire and a fatality.

Engine companies get called to the scene of traffic accidents whether or not there is a fire, because chances are we will get there first, and there is always the possibility of a vehicle fire. Some houses have a Rescue unit with a Hurst tool and other equipment to pry people from wrecks; some have EMS units. We're a fairly small house; we have one engine apparatus and one ladder apparatus. But when there is a wreck nearby, we get the call, and we are usually on the scene at the same time as Rescue and EMS if not before. If none of the vehicles involved are on fire, we usually stay until we are sure that everything is under control per EMS and the police. If there is a fire, of course, that's our job.

The call came in just as I had turned off the laptop and was hitting the rack. We are often called to the scene of medical emergencies -- heart attacks, falls, fights, industrial injuries. This is because there are more firehouses than hospitals, so chances are we can get to the scene first. Most firefighters have some EMT training and all of us have CPR and basic first aid, so we are often called in first to take care of the situation until EMS can arrive with an ambulance. Wrecks are more frequent non-fire calls, though, and they usually involve a lot more than CPR and a little handholding. This one was sure no exception.

It was raining, and the rain was turning to sleet. A car and a minivan had collided on the on-ramp to I-490 at East 55th. Apparently the car cut off the minivan and the minivan driver didn't see it and was unable to slow down in time. The car was totaled. It looked as if a very pissed off minor deity had grabbed it up, wrung it like a washcloth and tossed it to the pavement. The front end of the mini-van was smashed in pretty thoroughly. The impact had sent the minivan fishtailing into the guardrail, where the gas tank eploded. Flames were shooting from the minivan's undercarriage and left rear.

This doesn't happen nearly as often as the movies show it; if you've seen an action movie with a car chase, you might think that every vehicle is built to explode on impact. In truth, since Ford recalled the Pintos in the mid-70's, there have been very few vehicles made that are likely to explode even on very hard impact. What generally happens is that the gas tank is punctured on impact and the accumulated fumes eventually explode as a result of friction from passing vehicles, an attempt to turn the ignition key, sparks from the vehicle's electrical system or improper attempts to pry the wreckage or other accidental sources. However, regardless of the reason or timing, it's always nasty when it happens. Best case is that all passengers have been removed from the involved vehicle and emergency personnel are well out of the way. But of course, if this was a best case, you wouldn't have a massive wreck on the freeway ramp at 2:30 in the morning.

In this case, the goddamn thing went up just as the last passenger was being removed from the minivan by Rescue. We were on the scene just as it happened, which was amazingly good timing considering how bad the rest of the situation was. Dispatch had told us there was no fire, but Dispatch forgot to say "yet".

We were off the truck and had the pumper going immediately, and we had the fire out within a few minutes. The driver of the minivan, a woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties, had been bundled into the Metro ambulance, bleeding from a head wound, but she was sitll conscious. Her passengers, a younger woman and three little kids, were put into the EMS ambulance. The younger woman was ambulatory but her dull, lifeless expression indicated she might be in shock. The kids, who all looked to be under five, were screaming and crying, but it would be hard to tell if they were hurt and how badly until they got them to the ER.

The car was another story. Rescue had the driver on a Gurney and he was covered by a sheet, waiting for transport. He wasn't going anywhere in a hurry, now or ever again.

Probably the thing that bothered me most about this is that as we were standing talking to the cops about what happened, a brightly colored object on the sleet-drenched pavement caught my eye. It was a small stuffed bear with a bright purple ribbon around its neck. And on the ground next to it was a ripped-open twelve pack of Natural Light beer and a couple of empty cans.

"This come from the van?" I asked the younger cop.

"Nah. All his," he said, indicating the body on the Gurney.

"Was there a kid in the car?"

"No. Not tonight, thank God."

"Man."

"Yeah."

No matter how many times you see it, it never loses its impact. At least, it doesn't if you are doing this job for the right reasons. As dead bodies go, this was one of the tidier ones, and he had the courtesy to be nicely covered before we got there, but I don't care how many of them you see -- it's never easy. It's part of the job, and you can't afford to emotionally process every fatality you encounter as it happens. You have a job to do. Grief and its handmaidens, Fear and Anger, don't have seats on any working apparatus. We have an obligation to the survivors and to our brother firefighters, to save lives and minimize damage. But dealing with death will definitely work on you, and sometimes, if you don't fully realize its impact at the time, you will later.

There is, of course, a lot of black humor involved. We find nothing funny about the fact that someone was killed, but we definitely joke about the circumstances in which we find them and find ourselves. What passes for humor among the brothers might not be considered amusing or appropriate to the outside world, but believe me when I tell you, we grieve your loss too. Some of the jokes we tell are just coping mechanisms for enduring the pain of loss we feel too. Our loss is in no way as great as yours, but our loss is compounded by the pain of failure. Whether or not it is right, any fire in which there are fatalities makes us question whether there's something more we could have done, something we neglected, overlooked or failed to consider. We are taught to solve problems as well as save lives, and when we feel we have failed to do so, we blame ourselves.

So our humor is a method of surviving what would otherwise be an unbearable burden. You need us at maximum usefulness, so we need to avoid crippling emotions such as grief, self-doubt and bitterness. One of the ways we do this is by joking. Never at the scene, never within earshot of any of the victims, but things can get pretty raw sometimes back at the house. It's our way, and it may sound odd to say, but it's humor born out of love for the people we serve. An outsider might be shocked at some of the things we consider funny, but it's all a way of "keeping our heads from killing our bodies," as my Uncle Owen used to say. So my remark about the fatality having had the decency to be covered with a sheet is not intended to be disrespectful to the guy who was killed. It's more a way of keeping the living on an even keel.

Anyway, back at the house, there was a little winding down before we all got back in the rack, but the atmosphere wasn't as charged as it would be after, say, a multiple-alarm fire involving a residential block. As wrecks go, it was nasty, but it was pretty standard fare. There were a few mutters about the driver who caused the wreck. Derrico had learned from one of the cops at the scene that the diver had a record of multiple DUI's, something like four in the last three years. "Yeah, well, just think of all the time they'll save in Traffic Court" said Derrico. "The cops ought to like that. The downside is his bartender probably won't be able to buy a boat until next year." Black, bleak humor, but sometimes that's how we are.

But when I turned in, as I lay there in the rack, a single image kept coming back to me. There, face down on the pavement in the sleet, had been that little teddy bear. Somebody's toy. Somebody's daddy. Alcohol removed a lot more than a drunken driver from the road this night. It also took away a big part of some child's life.

I've been drinking a lot lately. Part of it I've been blaming on the Grace thing, part of it is blowing off stress after work. It might be a good time to look at that. On the one hand, I'm not somebody's father or husband or.....

On the other hand, there's a life involved here too. Mine.

I'm too tired to process all this right now. The hell with it, and we'll see what happens in the morning. Unlike that poor guy, I'll have another day to think it all over. Believe it or not, for that I'm truly grateful.