00/10/19
 

Last night I whispered to a corpse.

I’ve whispered to a few over the years, not unlike this one. It’s important sometimes for those of us who live, and, I hope for those we whisper to.

0155 18 October
The pager beside my bed beeped, I remember popping awake and thinking “May as well have a fire, it was a crappy sleep anyhow” I slipped my sweats on and headed for the door. Late-night firecalls are usually the worst. Late night is the time that drunks lurk in the dark and kill people on highways, old folks convulse in their beds as their hearts stop, and fires get a strong hold before anyone knows about them.

“Hall 9 from dispatch, hall 9, a report of a residential structure fire, 20433 31 avenue multiple calls” Fire dispatchers  keep their cool under all manner of conditions, but we get to know their tone of voice. Last night she was talking fast and just a bit too loud. It sounded bad. What she had said was that a house was on fire in one of our reidential districts, multiple calls meant that it was going strong enough that many people were seeing it and calling 911. This was the real thing. I dressed in my gear and slid into my car to go to the call. I am the captain of my paid-call crew and often respond ahead of the trucks to establish a command on the scene so that there is a plan when the rigs roll in.

I was half a mile away when I saw the glow.
As I drew nearer I saw that strange horizontal light that a burning house gives, you drive down the road and see cars parked in front of the house lit from beside them with a white-yellow flickering light. A glow rises from the surrounding trees and sparks as big as fists fly up into the dark smoke pall, lit from underneath the smoke has shadows that look like laughing demons.

I parked across the street and took it all in at a glance. My job is to establish command and direct the crews, my job is to decide how the fire will be fought. Decisions must be made immediately, choices have to be made, resources allocated. In these first seconds the fight is won or lost, the dominoes begin to fall in one direction or other, and once the begin to fall there’s not much that will stop them.

“9-10 on scene and in command 20433 31 avenue I have a two-storey residential house with heavy smoke and flames showing from all front windows.”

I had few seconds to decide what exactly I needed to tell the approaching trucks. I couldn’t tell them that I was standing forty feet away and the heat was making my skin tighten, I couldn’t tell them that the fire was popping louder than gunshots. I couldn’t tell them about the horrified looks on the neighbors that surrounded me. I couldn’t tell them that the pressue inside was blowing the flames six feet horizontally out the windows before curling upward. I had to decide what the plan was.

A cop ran up, a female cop I had worked with a few times before. “The kids are out of the house, we think the mother is still inside”

I looked over at her, her eyes held the same desperate hope that I have seen so very many times, the look that sticks into me like a screwdriver through the sternum. That look that pleads with me to comfort her, to reassure her that everything will be okay. I turned to the cop and said “Call the coroner” she looked back at me with something akin to loathing, but she made the call.

I got to work.
“Pumper 9 from command”

“Pumper 9 here, go ahead”

“Take the hydrant on the east corner, Blitz line up front and in air, this is the big time, one inside”

“I read big time, hydrant, Blitz line and one inside”

What I had told my first crew was to attach the truck to the hydrant to the east of the house, a Blitz line is a 2.5” diameter fire hose that delivers 300 gallons per minute. It hits really hard and fast. Up front means attack the front of the building from the outside. The ‘Big time’ means it’s a big fire. One inside means just that, we have one person inside. I had one more message, I hated to give it, but I had to.

“This will be a recovery”

“Read you boss”

Over the static of the radio and over the approaching sirens and shouts of bystanders I could hear the anger and disappointment in his voice. I had told them there was no hope of rescue.I had told him that we would be recovering a body, not rescuing a person. I would have loved to hope but the flames wouldn’t let me. There was simply no way on earth that any human could be alive in that maelstrom.

At 0335 one of my crews found her body. While we fought the fire and waited and searched we had seen her weeping children taken by ambulance to be checked out, they had taken a bit of smoke but would be okay. They would be physically okay that is, they would never actually be “okay” ever again.

She lay beside her bed buried under burned rubble. What was visible didn’t really resemble a human all that much, but after a few you get to know what to look for. A disposable blanket was brought in and she was covered. An hour later the smoke and carbon monoxide levels in the house were low enough that the cops could come in and examine the scene. Shortly after we removed the body and put it in the care of the coroner.

Once we find a body one of us stays with it until it is removed from the house. We do it because we won’t leave someone entrusted to us alone. One of us at least is with them at all times until they can be removed by the cops.

In that hour I sat beside her body and saw the sky begin to grey outside the window and the stars fade. I felt morning’s chill replace the stored heat in the walls. I thought about a parent’s fears, the fears of harm coming to our kids, the fears of living without them, and the fear of leaving them to live without us. I sat in that room and felt what I had felt so many times before, I felt her soul there. There is awhile right after a person dies that they are still around. You can feel them like a person standing right behind you. This is when I whisper to them. I told her what I would want to hear were I in her place. I sat with her for awhile and whispered to her there in the lightening silence.

Later we helped the coroner load her into a body bag and pack the stretcher out across the charred floor joists. Later we loaded hose back onto the trucks and bone-weary men and women went back to their other lives.

I took one last walk around the house checking for dropped or forgotten equipment. In the hallway I saw the smoke detector hanging open. The battery had been removed long before. Alone upstairs I walked back to the bedroom and stood looking at the unburned carpet where her body had lay. I looked around knowing that she was somewhere with me.

Before I left I whispered to the steaming greyness  “Your kids are safe”.
 

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