Picture running into a burning building. Flames are shooting out of the
walls and ceilings. Thick, black smoke blinds your vision. The heat is so
intense that you feel like you're on fire yourself.
This is exactly what firefighter Mike Smyrl does for a living. Believe
it or not, this is not the hardest part of the job for him.
"When you're in this situation, you run on instinct, and so fighting
the fire becomes a very impersonal thing," he explains.
It's the personal part of the job that is most upsetting. As a firefighter,
Smyrl often gets called out to serious car accidents and medical emergencies.
"The worst part is when you get a call in the middle of the night to go
to a car accident scene, and you just know someone has been really badly hurt
-- or worse.
"I dread this more than anything, because it's our job to get the
bodies out of the car. It's our job to unwrap the metal from around people
who are screaming in pain. When you see that kind of pain on a person's
face, you never forget it."
Much of a firefighter's time on duty is taken up by training and by
maintaining firefighting equipment. "When we arrive at work, we spend the
first part of our shift doing equipment checks and running through our drills,"
says Smyrl. "Then we start working on our various housekeeping duties."
Because firefighters live at the fire hall while they are on shift, most
have kitchens, bedrooms or dorms, washrooms and living areas. It's the
firefighters' responsibility to keep up with all of the domestic chores
needed to keep everyday life running smoothly. In fact, Smyrl laughingly says
these domestic duties point to the most important skill for firefighters:
being a good cook.
"Firefighters never let you live down a bad meal. Burning a dinner is a
fate worse than death," he says with a laugh.
While the personal side of being a firefighter can be frightening, Smyrl
says this aspect of the job can also be the most rewarding. He remembers one
occasion when he was called to a house fire in the middle of the night. By
the time Smyrl's backup team arrived at the scene, the first
unit had managed to get two of the people out of the house and down to safety.
A child was still trapped in an upstairs bedroom of the home.
"When we got there, the house was already looking pretty bad. The whole
structure was starting to crumble. We went in with the hoses and started searching
upstairs for the boy. No one could seem to find him and the situation was
getting worse by the minute."
Smyrl and the other firefighters were just about to give up hope. There
was no sign of the child in his bedroom or the hall, and they were starting
to think the child had been killed by smoke inhalation, or had tried to escape
and failed.
"Then it occurred to me -- where would I have gone if I was that age and
scared to death? I ran around checking for what looked like the parent's
bedroom. It seemed like ages, but finally I found him hiding under his parents'
bed."
By the time Smyrl got the boy out of the burning building, everyone else
had just about given up hope, too.
"It was like a scene from a movie. I emerged from the house with the boy
wrapped in my coat and everyone came rushing towards me. His parents took
him from me and thanked me, over and over again.
"I was just doing my job. I know everybody says that, but it's true,"
says Smyrl. "But I have to admit, it's pretty great to have a job where
doing your job well makes you a hero from time to time."