A subtle, but deeply profound change comes over the faces of Alameda Fire Academy recruits from the time they suit up before facing their live fire attack and rescue training sessions of the day to the time when the ordeal –or at least part of it– is over.
Expressions of anticipation preceding the flame and smoke-filled sessions…
… morph, in the aftermath of their dealings with Dante, into weighty ones of reflection and reckoning, colored by a touch of fatigue and the reconciling of the hardship, discomfort and danger they just endured.
It shows in their veteran instructor’s faces.
It is an expression manifest on most all firefighters’ faces after they emerge from battling actual fires in the community.
Having ‘done the drill’ before on this day, both trainees and trainers well know what awaits them and what will take place deep within each of them as the outside world departs when they move, single file, into the trappings of a steel cargo container.
Once inside, they hunker down low as an instructor ignites a pyramid of wooden pallets and other combustible material, starting a fire that will burn through its phases. This is no joyous celebration like Burning Man. Quite the opposite.
In all too short a time, they find themselves in the confines of a cramped and hostile world, one whose dimensions are just those of the interior of a toxic smoke-laden hot-box that can reach 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
The combination of smoke, heat, fumes, fire and survival instinct presses them ever closer to their inner tolerance points.
Though controlled in the environment of a converted metal shipping container, the fire becomes the center of their ever-compressing universe, as vision diminishes, and breathing hastens amid thick, disorienting black smoke.
Breaking sweat slowly pools into beads and then forms tiny rivulets inside their helmets, oxygen masks and turnout gear as body core and skin temperatures rise.
When the drill ends, and they emerge from the hellish place, stripping masks off to take that first natural breath –as though drowning persons just breaking the water surface– their expressions show stern, intense focus, discomfort, relief and an internal grappling with survival that radiates straight through their eyes, while facial skin glistens in the sunlight and fresh air.
Put succinctly, they share the common bond of those who bear the faces of fortitude that come with the line of duty of firefighters .
For these recruits in the Class of ’23, these moments are but a portent of many more, high intensity, danger riddled experiences that will come in less known, much more hazardous environments.
In what can be deathtraps of destruction for both victim and rescuer, their education will help them face the peril and uncertainties of the real thing, a powerful and menacing adversary which only they and their veteran cohorts can vanquish , while hope eternal burns for all to emerge alive and unscathed.
Matthew Waespi
