18 December 2004 WORKING FIRE: THE MAKING OF AN ACCIDENTAL FIREMAN by Zac Unger, The Penguin Press, March 2004, ISBN: 1-59420-001-7

"It was once upon a place sometimes I listen to myself

Gonna come in first place

People on their way to work say baby what did you expect

Gonna burst into flame"

--Talking Heads, "Burning Down the House"

"Sitting on the hillside, I half hoped we'd get a good fire to play with that day. It's bad form to hope for a fire, but we can't help it; fire is what we look forward to. A fire means that somebody is in danger and may lose his or her life or health. A fire means that we're putting ourselves at risk, that one of us may get dragged away to the hospital with a broken ankle or smoke inhalation or something worse. Fires are categorically a bad thing, and we wish for them every day."

Despite having fond childhood memories of visiting the Hamptons for lazy weeks of hot beach weather, it was a radically new experience to spend the winter out there in my own little beach cottage on the sheltered Peconic Bay. The combination of constant tides and freezing temperatures results in the steady build-up of enormous, untidy piles of ice near the shore. Wandering out onto the "iceburgs" is good, clean winter fun--as long as you don't go too far out onto thin ice.

Those colder months also frequently bring screaming winds that tear across the Bay. It's nice to have a wood stove for keeping warm as those winds seek to penetrate into the cottage's every little seam and crevice.

"It's getting hot in here" --Nelly

The wind was literally screaming that night, and I had packed the stove full of oak before retiring. But it was feeling way too hot in the bedroom when I suddenly woke up and crawled out of bed, hardly able to breathe. Decades later I can still recall stumbling into the main room, seeing the paneled wall behind the stove fully engulfed in flames, screaming anxiously for my dog, Slider, who was asleep in the little upstairs room, and running barefoot across frozen grass, rocks, and sand to my parents' house to phone the North Sea volunteer fire department.

"Being lost in a fire is nothing like being lost in the woods. There is no almost lost, no almost found. Just lost. Completely and utterly lost. And getting lost in a burning building happens immediately. I've been lost in the forest, and it's a gradual process, a state of mind that you can allow yourself to slip into for a while. There's always a feeling of I think I recognize that tree or I'm pretty sure I'm moving in the right direction. A smoky room, by contrast, is entirely featureless.

"I could tell that nobody had found the seat of the flames yet, because the heat kept getting worse. My regulator said that I had a thousand pounds of air left, about a quarter of my tank, five or ten minutes if I could breathe slowly."

The privileged son of a psychiatrist and a teacher, Zac Unger grew up in a nice neighborhood between Oakland and Bezerkley. He'd graduated from an elite Oakland prep school, earned degrees at Brown and Cal, and had spent time on the coast observing the mating habits of elephant seals, as well as in a mountainous national park counting peregrine falcons. Zac was still trying to figure out what he'd do when he "grew up" when he spotted the advertisement on the back of a bus bench that eventually led him to months at the academy where he trained to be an Oakland fireman.

"I'm not quite sure why we spend so much time washing the fire engine; everybody always asks. I've owned a red pickup since I was sixteen,and it's never had a wash. Except once when another firefighter wet it down behind my back in the firehouse parking lot because he couldn't stand to look at it anymore. I've alway figured a car is just a way to get from place to place, and as long as it runs, I don't much care what it looks like. But washing the fire engine is the most archetypal 'fireman' thing we do. It's what everyone associates us with. That and grocery shopping. And carrying babies down ladders."

The reality of Zac's work is actually quite different from those archetypes. The majority of the time when Zac and his brother and sister firefighters go screeching out of the firehouse the call does not involve a building on fire. WORKING FIRE is a fascinating and lively expose into the world and work of today's professional urban firefighter. Zac's paramedic skills are constantly put to the test. And for a first responder in a city, survival can as easily involve escaping shootouts and drunken brawls as it can mean not getting lost in a burning building.

"Heroin overdose is an easy one. I put a short tube in his mouth, just long enough to tickle the back of his throat and deliver some oxygen. One injection of Narcan to his shoulder, and then there was nothing to do but use the ventilator bag to breathe for him and wait. Narcan goes straight to the chemical receptors where heroin is received and blocks them out. True to form for resuscitated junkies, in about two minutes our playboy started waking up, gagging on the tube, and cussing us out for stealing his high. Another satisfied customer."

"Almost ablaze still you don't feel the heat

It takes all you got just to stay on the beat.

You say it's a livin', we all gotta eat

But you're here alone, there's no one to compete.

If Mercy's a bus'ness, I wish it for you

More than just ashes when your dreams come true."

--Grateful Dead, "Fire on the Mountain"

But besides the well-chosen anecdotes that illuminate the dangerous and sometimes deadly calls to fires, accidents, and unplugged TVs, WORKING FIRE is also a look at the stories and colorful personalities of the boys and girls who grow up to become firemen. From the brilliant veteran who refuses to retreat to a well-earned easy assignment in a hillside station, to the great and not-so-great firehouse cooks, to those who don't make the cut at the academy, we meet real characters who are frequently worthy of a starring role in someone's contemporary novel.

Unger--whose intellectual pedigree made him a breed rather different from the typical fire department recruit--has found his place among the 42,000-pound, shining red machines that go screaming down the road to answer the call. WORKING FIRE is a thoroughly engaging book for all of us who stop in our tracks to watch those engines and trucks go roaring by.

"When the rig is gleaming clean and you step off while snugging your helmet onto your head as you kick the ax up smoothly and slip it down into its spot on your hip like a gunslinger. It's all worth it then--the dead guy in the hallway that morning, the petty hassles with admin, the pain in your back that seems to be there every day now. Because you're a fireman, the closest thing there is in this world to being a superhero."

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com