Whew, No Bullet Holes

I had probably been in the fire department about six months when we were called out for a structure fire. Upon arriving on scene, we found dense fire at the back of the house in the master bedroom. Flames were really beginning to roll down the hallway ceiling en-route to engulfing the rest of the home. In many small rural fire departments the inexperienced volunteers would have simply broken out a window adjoining the master bedroom to get to the fire.  They would continue blasting water into the burning room until water poured back out over the broken window ledge onto their boots. Jeff had trained us quite differently. After placing the back of our ungloved hand against the front door to check for any searing heat inside, we were trained to charge into the house staying low under the rancid smoke, hunt down that dragon and chase him out the nearest window or door by using the smallest amount of water possible that would get the job done—this helped us minimize water damage by not putting too much of the “Wet Stuff on the Red Stuff.” This is the name of the book I'm working on.

That evening we were short of volunteers, par for the course, I was the only fireman on the nozzle of the attack-hose line inside the house. This was well before the two man in, two man out rule we use today. I had gathered that mean old dragon up in my water fog stream and was briskly herding him back down the hallway, forcing him to go back into the bedroom where he had escaped from. When I reached the bedroom door, I struggled with him a bit, but I finally got him trapped back inside the confines of the bedroom. Cautiously, I advanced with my nozzle into the bedroom, when without any warning, I heard rapid fire, BANG, BANG, BANG as I felt hot lead hitting my turnout gear. I immediately recognized the ka-bang sound as being that of gunshots. BANG, BANG, POW! I knew many people stored ammunition in their bedrooms to keep it away from the kids— BANG, BANGITY, BANG! It sounded like an old Gatling gun going berserk. The hot lead from the stray bullets kept grazing my legs and zinging off my helmet—I dropped my charged fire hose and made one of the best "Starsky and Hutch" dives out of that bedroom door threshold you have ever seen . Rolling out into the narrow hallway and then running a few steps, I run smack into one of the more experienced fire guys coming inside to help back me up on the hose line. His reaction was, “What the hell are you doing?” I replied, “Can’t you hear all that ammunition going off inside that bedroom?....Don’t worry about me though. I don’t think I got hit too bad—I don’t think the bullets went all the way through my turnouts.” “You fricking rookies!” he yells at me. (but he didn’t really say "fricking.") I think he may have thrown a “you dumb as…,” in there too. He quickly explained to me that only the shell casings are flying when bullets explode in a hot fire. The lead of the bullet is a lot heavier, so it doesn’t travel more than a few inches when the bullets' powder ignites.

Quickly patting around on my body, feeling for obvious bullet holes, I'll be darn, there weren’t any! Now all I had to do was figure out how I was going catch that live, pressurized fire hose that was flailing around in the other room that I had so gracefully abandoned moments earlier in my effort to save my own skin. I think we ended up with a little extra water damage at that fire... but it was one of my very first live fire experiences.