Walking into the Flames

I am many things.

I am a daughter, a sister, an employee, an artist, a friend, but one of my favorite things is that I am a volunteer firefighter.

We are a dying breed, us volunteer fire departments. As towns get smaller and smaller, so do the fire departments tasked to protect the areas around and inside the town. We lack many things but the more important thing we lack is people who want to put the time and effort into being a volunteer. People don’t want to do it anymore, and it’s an unfortunate reality we live in.

Everyone wants someone to be there to put out the fires that can, and eventually will, burn down their house or destroy their fields, but what happens when there isn't anyone to put out these fires? Then what will become of these small outcropping of towns that are surrounded by nothing but open fields?

Fire is a dangerous thing. It's alive, and at times it can be very unpredictable, and it can change in the blink of an eye when the wind changes direction.

But when you have the courage to rise above the fear that comes with the hot flames above you, you can do some pretty amazing things. I've overcome many things not only in the real deal but also in fire school training that are hosted all-around at different points in time for volunteer fire departments.

Sometimes they throw you into real-world situations and test you in a safe and controlled environment. It's scary at first, but once you fight through the fear and sometimes even the physical aspect, you can amaze yourself by what you can do in challenging situations you get thrown into.

I remember a specific obstacle that I went through in a specific training exercise, and I overcame it. We had just been working on how to put on our air packs and change the bottles out, and it was time to put all of our knowledge to the test we had learned over the four hours we spent learning the basics of firefighting.

( Now, as you read, please note that I am a woman that is only five feet tall and weighing about 115- pounds soaking wet. I am a very petite person. )

So after we learned about all of that, two people from each department (Well, the ones that wanted to do the maze type exercise) would be dressed head-to-toe in their bunker gear, with an air pack that is roughly around twenty pounds, and they'd go through a maze. Seems pretty easy, right? Well, that's where you're sorely mistaken. You see, we had to go through the maze as it's full of thick gray smoke. The smoke was artificial, of course, but it was there to simulate actual smoke, how you could barely see in front of you when you're in a building that's covered in smoke from a fire raging in one room or from above in the ceiling. But if that didn't make things so much harder, you and your partner had to crawl through it on your hands and knees, and while you are crawling, you have to hold on to the persons' ankle in front of you.

The challenge made me want to do it even more. So I could walk through the fire, so to speak, and come out unscathed. So I could say that I did it and I wasn't afraid.

Heading inside was the easiest part of the exercise. Shuffling on the ground with twenty pounds on your back is a pretty hard thing to do, especially when that was the first time I had ever worn an air pack. I noticed the more I moved forward it was hard to keep ahold of my partners' boot in front of me. I couldn't hold on any longer and I ended up letting go and we got separated for a few moments. But in those few moments, I hit a roadblock.

In my mind, I had thought that the air pack had gotten caught on something but in reality, the weight of the air pack had caused me to fall forwards. I felt trapped and that scared me. My breathing started to pick up and when you have a limited air supply, a slip-up like panicking can have you falling into a life or death situation. In my moment of weakness, I ended up calling out for help, and the instructor helped walk me through it.

I started to think that I couldn't do it but after a few seconds something in my brain click and with a couple of grunts as a battle cry, I managed to pull myself up from the floor and eventually lead my partner to the exit. Those next few minutes after I managed to keep going were the hardest in my opinion. My muscles were yelling at me, almost begging me to stop but I knew I couldn't. I wanted to prove that someone of my size could go through the exercise and come out on top.

It was an amazing experience and if I had to do it all over again I'd still go through with it. It showed me that I could do something hard and still manage to pull through. It's such a powerful feeling. It boosted my confidence and changed my whole view of the situation I was facing being a woman in a mostly male-dominated field. With the confidence boosted I wasn't scared to learn new things that would help me later on as a volunteer. I started to jump at other opportunities to do things first or even second for that matter. One moment can change everything and I think that is truly amazing.

So the next time you see a volunteer firefighter or even a regular firefighter thank them because if they don't put out our fires or even rescue us from cars then we wouldn't have anyone to do it. Firefighters go through so much and a lot of it leads to them getting cancer, dying on the job, or even committing suicide.

I hope you are able to take something away from this and maybe pass it on to your friends and family because firefighting, EMS, and even police work is hard and it's time-consuming. But someone has to do it, so we answer the call to help because if we don't. Who will?