The calm before the storm

The spring and summer of 04 saw a good bit. One thing you can count on in southern summers, lots of heat. Heat can make for dangerous body conditions on a firefighter, so hydration and partnership is key. You've gotta watch the mans back that's with you just like he needs to watch yours. I was still working for my uncle during the day and running calls at night. For my small community, out calls were mainly woods fires and the occasional "possible" house fire. There were medical calls in there as well, but at the time, I wasn't medically certified. Gas prices were looking at an increase here too. Shocker, huh? Gas was looking to rise to $2 per gallon and up. Don't you wish we were back in 04?   By this time, my uncle had taken his sights off auto parts and placed it into metal recycling, leading to the purchase and remodeling of a scrap yard he was intending on opening. The only problem was, it was 3 towns over. That's a lot of driving. 

One of the first accidents I can remember responding to came in the early morning hours. The call came in as a woods fire, no surprise there. The scene was in a patch of woods in the more forested portion of our area, dead in between the two small communities we protected. Houses here were few and far apart. I was the second one to arrive on scene. The lieutenant and I hopped the fence and began to put out the fire. I can remember it just like it was last week. The Lt says to me "be careful in a minute, we won't have any light after we put this out." My first thought was, "then why don't we just leave it like it is now?" He wasn't lying, it got dark quick. When we cleared the fence back at the truck, I happen to notice the chief and one of the senior guys looking into a metal box. I then heard a code over the radio that I'll never forget in my life. It was the code for a fatality accident. We figure that the occupant was coming home after work on the night shift and began to fall asleep. They went off the road in a curve and became airborne, striking a tree which we believe caused the fire. 

House fires had picked up a little around this time, it seemed like there was at least one every two weeks. We were pretty good at saving most of them, despite our reputation. Some of them, however, were just too old to keep the fire from spreading too fast. All the renovations had been completed on the scrap yard, and I was due to start work there soon. Try as I might to acquire a job that paid better and would keep me close to town, I ended up having to go to the scrap yard to work. On the bright side, the pay was better, and I no longer had a truck note to worry about. My insurance was what was killing me due to a previous accident I was in when I was 17 or so. To cut down on drive time and gas, I elected to stay with my mom in Alabama. This didn't help me run calls since I was over 30 miles away from the area, but I did what I had to do. The days were usually spent getting dirty from head to toe, and the nights were usually spent alone with family because I had no one other than extended family in Alabama that I knew. I would visit my cousin and what few friends that her and I shared there, but ultimately after a few months, I ended up visiting home quite often. I would stay at my moms Sunday night, Monday night, and Tuesday night for work. Wednesday night I would go to church and then go home to sleep, I would work Thursday and go to the fire department meetings before going home and going to sleep for work. I would spend Friday night at the football game or at somebody's house, and all day Saturday and including the night with whoever wherever I felt like. Sunday, I would go back to my moms house only to be there for a few nights. I continued to gain new relationships from the firemen at the local fire departments around us, thus giving me somewhere else to be when I was home. I don't know whether it was the fact that we were young or whether we were in a time and place that we knew we could get away with a lot, but we sure did some dumb shit as firemen back in the day.  I probably did some equally dumb shit in my personal life at the time as well. 

It was at this time in my life when I learned the importance of joy riding. Joyriding may be fun to someone in a young age, it may be frowned upon by adults, but in reality is a very useful way to pass the time and a wonderful navigation tool when you're in a new place or you're discovering new places in your home town. I did both. I realized that I was not saving as much as I thought I would staying in Alabama if I continuously ran back-and-forth to Mississippi for the activities I wanted to be a part of, So I decided that I would come back home and stay. That decision proved to not be a bad one when I got the telephone call for an interview and drug screen for the receiving job I applied for at Walmart.  Finally, after a year and a half, I was going to get out of the dirt and mud and climb into a slightly cleaner job closer to home. I couldn't have picked a better time to start at Walmart. The Christmas holidays were approaching us and that usually meant more hours to get all of the product from the trucks to the floor. Christmas at Walmart is pretty much a revolving door when it comes to product on the shelves. I was rounding my second year in the department and things seemed to be going great. I had a good job, the pay wasn't bad, I had a few good friends, and I couldn't be more happier in the department. Life wasn't so bad. One late December evening, my friend (who had moved from my dept to a neighboring dept) and I was at work, doing what we normally did those nights. He usually carried his pager on him for notifications of calls that were going on. I had given mine to a friend that had came into the department shortly after I had received my radio, so I didn't need it. My friend called me aside at work and showed me the notification on his pager, one that I will never forget. 

Hearing of a firefighter down anywhere near your community will hit home in some way, shape, or form. It's worse when it's a member of one of the fire departments in your community, but it really hits home when it's two of yours and one of the southern depts guys. I've only ever heard stories, but they say that the three when in alone on a structure fire. When they realized that the visibility was extremely low and that there was no fire present that they could find, they elected to turn around and head back. That's when all hell broke loose. The fire was apparently in the attic and broke loose when an attic hatch fell to the floor, allowing the fire to reach for oxygen and burn the unburned gases in the smoke that was left inside the house. All they saw was fire. One made it out with what little strength he had left, but the other two were still inside fighting for their lives. All three sustained heavy burns. By the time we got there, the fire was out, all three had been transported to hospitals, and the debriefing meeting was being held outside by the fire chiefs. My friend had to go back to work, but I was cleared to stay home since I was already in overtime. Visiting a brother firefighter in the hospital isn't something you're fond of doing. It's one thing you hope you don't have to do. 

Sometime after that, the department held an election of officers. Election of officers, depending on each department, can result and new leadership anywhere from line officers such as lieutenants to the Fire Chief himself. I was nominated to be lieutenant this time around. I had the qualifications the department set out in their bylaws and I was one of the more active members out of our membership. Ever since I had been with the fire department, I wanted to make lieutenant, I wanted that red helmet. Ultimately, I was out voted to a firefighter who was substantially older than I, but had the same level of training and had been there only a few months less than me. This decision didn't please me, but it didn't make me do my job any less. Knowing what I know now, I was nowhere near ready for leadership and I'm glad the vote passed me by. 

The year 2005 would prove to be a very enlightening year, not only for me personally, but for the South as a whole, and my fire departments as well. In February, I decided to do something that I would regret for years,  I bought a brand-new truck. I never really realized how much pain and headache there is after you buy a new truck until I had one of my own. I'll never do it again. When you buy a new vehicle, especially a model that has not long been out, you inherit all the bugs and quirks that the manufacturer hasn't yet worked out. That's exactly what I ended up with. 

If you've never been late for work because you were stuck at a fire, you clearly have not been a firefighter very long. I was probably an hour and a half late for work because I refused to leave the paid firefighter by himself to fight a woods fire we were on. I know what you're going to say, "why not call for help??", Calling for help is exactly what we did, Our help just decided to leave us to go on another call in their area. I guess I don't have to say that the management was not too happy about me being late because I was on fire, but they got over it. 

Prom just happened to be around the corner, and I was duly informed by the girl I was talking to at the time that I would be taking her. Alright! Keep in mind that I dropped out of high school as a junior, and had never attended my junior prom because I didn't see the point in it, so this would actually be my first. I did the entire prom thing, rented a tux, bought a corsage, did a dinner date, and posed for the pictures. The only thing that was missing was the limo, and why rent a limo when I had just bought a brand-new truck. Prom, for me, wasn't all that exciting. We went, we took pictures, we hung out with friends, we watched senior walk out, and then decided to get out of Dodge. Where did we go after that? The fire station! Why? Because we were young, bored, and didn't really care as long as it was mildly entertaining. It was shortly after that that I started reevaluating my job and how it affected my life. Night shift was okay, you didn't really have to deal with people in the store after a certain hour, but sleeping all day the next day all the time did get a little tiresome. My friend that had worked at Walmart with me had got a job at a furniture store in town that was only open during the day and paid about the same. I decided that this was a good move to make and started working a few weeks after. It was then that I found out that the pay wasn't what I had been told and shortly after working there the hours started to slip off due to lack of business. The hours had slipped off far enough that I was lucky to be working one day a week. When you have a truck note, high enough insurance already, a cell phone bill, and fuel expenses.. you can't really afford not to be working steadily. After over a year of my father trying to convince me to come to work with him, I finally gave in out of desperation. I began my early-morning drives to Houma, Louisiana to go work on the tugboats in an attempt to bail my ass out of the impending debt I was about to be in. I even went on the boats taking a girls heart with me. 

It didn't take many trips on the boat for me to realize that this place was going to drive me crazy. There was nothing to occupy my mind, which kept traveling to a bad decision I had made in the past concerning a girl that I had broken the heart of. Sometimes, you're own head isn't a good place to be. Being home was a nice relief though! I could run calls and be around people, keeping my mind out of the past. However, as soon as I returned to the boat and got idle time with nothing to occupy my mind, the past would creep up on me. It didn't take long to realize that this place wasn't good for me. I was home bound. I ended up trying to go back to Walmart, which would have worked out okay had they not waited over a week to call. By then, I had already secured another job as a warehouse worker and delivery driver. It was probably the middle of August 2005 when I started this gig, and it was going well! 

In the south, we have to keep an eye on hurricane season. These storms can put some people out of work for days while others roll in the overtime because of the need for their profession. I went home from work on Friday, August 26th on a regular weekend. Hurricane Katrina was due to hit sometime after Monday as a category 1, something we were all very familiar with, no big deal. By Sunday, the storm had upgraded to a cat 5 and was headed straight for the coast. Hurricane Katrina made landfall August 29th, 2005. Where I was, it felt like any other hurricane, we barely lost any shingles on the houses. Little did I know, destruction and death were occurring all around me. The days after were spent cleaning up the yards from all the tree debris. The cell services were jammed with calls, so calling loved ones wasn't an option. The county radio system had gone down from tower failure, so there was no telling what was happening in the community. A few days after the storm had passed, I got word that search and rescue efforts were under way in the southern portion of the community near the water. Everyone with a four wheeler came down to help search. My buddy and I drove through our home and found nothing more than what appeared to be a ton of wind damage, but the further south we drove, the more we realized that the water had risen. We all paired up on four wheelers and rode off to search for survivors. As we made our way toward the waterfront properties, I was overwhelmed with a sight that still plays in my head when I respond to these areas. My hone of 19 years was littered with the remains of countless houses from places that only god would know. There were houses in the middle of streets, flooded cars in random places, piles of wood and bricks where houses once stood, houses that used to tower over the land had disappeared as though out of thin air leaving only the legs they stood on, feet of mud made up most of the streets making it difficult to drive a vehicle around off of the main arteries. The house that I had grown up in was, now also, a pile of brick and wood. Friends' houses were even gone, leaving behind a perfect slab of concrete. We never recovered any bodies or rescued anyone trapped, but there were reports of coffins in the neighborhood streets that had broken loose from their mausoleums and drifted away. As the dark set in, we received word that our community centers would be centers for distributing ice, food, and water to everyone in the community. For a week or two, we handed out food, water, and ice daily from morning to late afternoon. We stayed tired, barely getting any sleep from working during the day, running calls at night, and sleeping in shifts to keep from things being stolen. The radio system had finally been fixed, so we were able to communicate with our radios if we needed to. Brotherhood was at it's highest in a long time.

After days of waiting and waiting, contemplating whether I had a job anymore or if I would have a job at all in town...the, now working, TV had informed me that my company would be meeting in a few days. Curfews were still in effect at nightfall in each of the cities, but we were able to work around that. When we finally entered the building, we got our first site of every business owner's nightmare. Our products were scattered all over the floor, there was mud everywhere, not a glimpse of light to be found, and it appeared that some of our vehicles had sustained damage. We immediately formed a plan to begin cleanup of the warehouse and take an inventory of the product loss for insurance. Our customers would be doing the same thing and would need the services we offered soon, so the ladies who handled the clerical jobs began to put the word out that we were coming back soon. To keep from calculating an inventory, the insurance company had decided to cover a total loss of the contents of the building. We salvaged what could not have been spoiled by the water level or heat and either used it for ourselves, or kept on hand for a small inventory for when we began to venture out. These tasks spanned over a few days of non stop work, then we received our power back. The next task was to figure out which vehicles were able to be safely driven and which ones were a total loss, this proved to be easier than we thought and even worked out in our favor. Slowly, but surely, life began to get back on track. Everyone that could work in the cities was working, getting their business back out in the market. Traffic to and from work was a constant nightmare due to the closing of several bridges into the cities, making it virtually impossible to get a bite to eat from what few restaurants were open by this point. As the customers made room on their shelves for our products, they began to pour in the lobby and the phones ready to get back to work. It was very welcomed news to all of us. Nothing changed in the county, we were still handing out food and water to those that needed it, but the numbers became fewer and fewer as the weeks went on. Calls even became fewer as things seemed to be smoothing out. Over the course of the next couple months, my delivery route went further and further west. I thought I had seen a mass of destruction where I was from, I had not seen anything yet.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall at the mouth of the Mississippi river, which is the dividing landmark of Mississippi and Louisiana. New Orleans was hit the hardest by the storm, leaving flooding waters inside parts of the city and outlying areas for weeks. Countless residents were left homeless, many taking refuge in the Superdome. The hardest cities hit by the storm in Ms were the cities of Bay St. Louis and Waveland. My route continued to span west into Hancock county as the days went on. My first venture this far peaked my sight for destruction. As far as the eye could see there were cars scattered everywhere, houses in odd places on land, debris for miles, and boats had even washed up on land. Never in my life had I seen such a horrible sight. Government officials were scattered everywhere, ranging from the local level to federal workers. It seemed like everywhere I went south of the interstate, I was met with broken buildings and flood debris. Even north of the interstate took on water, leaving behind pieces of houses everywhere. I had heard of tornadoes touching down in these areas, but it was almost impossible to tell the difference in the damage. As time moved along, the coast slowly went back to normal. The casinos hadn't yet opened their doors again, neither had some of the other businesses south of the interstate, but things were slowly coming back.

Close to the end of October, I noticed some of the office ladies making some accusations among some of us in the warehouse, myself included. There were some that complained of missing product from our trucks and money from the bank bags. Time and time again I had to force recounts, which usually resulted in what was being accused found. This didn't stop the office from trying. The owner never seemed too pleased with me either when I refused to high tail it around my route just so I could get back to the office when they wanted to go home. The last straw was the night she asked me if I was stupid. EXCUSE ME?? I don't think so, Lady. Deuces! I had a friend and fire department contact that needed some help repairing windshields at a local car wash. The money, in his opinion, would out-do what I was making now. Shortly before this transition, I had decided to transfer to one of the departments that protected the southern end of our community. To me, this would be an opportunity to run calls in a different area and to be a part of a department run similar to one on a larger scale. Work was work, I was learning the trade, but it didn't turn out on the scale that I had been led to believe. Oh well, it was a job. Being the low man on the totem pole, I was appointed to float around each location until they figured out my permanent stay....which was in the exact same town the scrapyard was in. Great.

Every firefighter has heard it in their career, the last call. The last call is a farewell broadcast on the radio to a fallen firefighter, usually done with the fire tones for that department. It has been known to bring the most hardened firefighters to tears. I carried my radio to work with me that morning to hear how the procession would go. What I heard at the end was something I had heard firefighters talk about for quite some time, but never heard for myself. My heart went out to their family, for I did not know them, but I could only imagine the amount of pain that my brothers were going through in the department even further south than I had landed with my new department. I've heard this sound twice now since then, and where I'm not really one brought to tears easily, that doesn't mean that it's not felt inside. Nothing changed, though. We were still a brotherhood, even though we had our differences between the three departments. We still worked as a team and did our jobs...and we did them well.