Entry 3:

We were just about to sit down to dinner when the speaker crackled. Everybody froze and strained to hear. Oakland is different from most cities in that the actual 911 call is piped into the station. You can usually tell from the caller's tone of voice whether it's just a pot on the stove, maybe some dryer lint burning, or the real deal. This time the lady sounded truly panicked, and when she said an address that was in our district, we were all on the rig and out the door before dispatch got the chance to ring our bells.

We could see smoke showing as we left the firehouse, a thick black cloud accompanied by the smell of burning plastic. The closest water was on the corner, so my partner JoJo hopped out and hooked the hydrant. We drove forward to the fire, laying supply line behind the engine, and parked in front of the fire building: a two-story apartment with flames venting out the rear, upstairs windows. While the captain kicked open the door, I pulled an attack line from the rig, flaked it out to the porch, pulled on my mask, and called for water. By the time I was ready to go in, JoJo was just coming up so I went inside on my own, knowing she'd be behind me after she turned her air bottle on.

The smoke was already banked down to the floor of the lower level, though I couldn't feel any heat. The captain fed me line as I advanced up the stairs, not flowing any water yet. It got hotter as I ascended, and I knew that making the hallway was going to be tough. I couldn't see anything, since the flashlight on my coat was just reflecting thick smoke. I knocked over a little end table on the landing, and a bunch of photos smashed off the walls as I tugged on the hose line and tried to feel my way up the stairs. Turning the corner of the top landing, I was immediately forced to my belly by the heat. For the first time, I could see where I was going.

Flames lighted up the hallway—both back bedrooms were going, and the fire was advancing down the hallway ceiling as we crawled along the floor to meet it. I could feel the skin on my ears prickling, and I was breathing heavily. JoJo punched my shoulder hard to get my attention and pointed up at the ceiling. The fire was just about to flash over on us: This is the point at which the room gets hot enough so that all the contents (firefighters included) simultaneously ignite, even without direct flame contact. It sounds scary (and it is), but it is also easy enough to recognize and avoid. I pointed the nozzle at the ceiling, tracing a few Z's with a straight stream of water, and hunkered down for the aftermath. In a hot fire like this one, the first water will disrupt the thermal layering and send heat and steam rolling down to the floor. Fortunately it only lasted a few seconds, and we were off and crawling again, the hallway extinguished, the bedrooms awaiting attention.

The first few minutes of a fire are oddly quiet. Once you get into the house and away from the diesel engines in the street, the building crackles like a campfire and flaming ceiling tiles and door frames are almost beautiful as they fall around you. However, every firefighter inside with a hose line wants the silence to be broken. Just as JoJo and I made it to the door of the first bedroom, I could hear the clumping of the ventilation crew up on the roof. A second later the noise of chain saws came down to me, and I knew it wouldn't be long until we got some relief from the heat. I knocked down the bedroom fire while kneeling in the doorway, then passed the nozzle to JoJo, who was in a better position to move forward to the master bedroom. The heat was almost unbearable at that point, and we were both crawling like worms over the hot floor, sucking air faster than our bottles wanted to deliver it. All at once I heard the crash I had been waiting for as the vent crew caved in a 4-foot square piece of ceiling and roof. Almost immediately the heat lifted and the smoke cleared, drawn up and away from us. It's a truism in the fire department that guys who work on the roof crew are thick-necked dumb brutes, but when they open the ceiling and pull the heat away, I wouldn't trade them for anyone.

One of the guilty pleasures of firefighting is the thrill of destruction. It's every boy's dream: I destroy things for a living. Need to clear the smoke? Smash a couple of skylights with an ax. Table in your way? Flip it over and throw it out the window. Every fire involves five minutes of fun—kicking down doors, crawling under heat and smoke, the chance to open the nozzle—and three hours of exhausting, boring, carcinogenic toil. Every potentially affected space has to be opened and overhauled; walls and ceilings are methodically chopped apart and dumped on the sidewalk. Often the entire roof has to be stripped, completely dismantled by a firefighter with a chain saw crawling along the steep pitch of a slick roof that is spongy and thin from the flames that burned beneath it. The perverse thing is that fighting fire is fun. Residents are standing in the street, watching everything they have be destroyed, and we're having the time of our lives. Fire is inevitable—somebody might as well enjoy it.

After all the work was done, we loaded up hose that was lying in the street, changed out our used air bottles, and drove back to the firehouse, wet and shivering. Dinner had been sitting out for four hours; the chicken was cold and greasy, the broccoli had steamed itself to mush over the pilot light, and the brownies looked like a prehistoric tar pit. We all wolfed it down silently, too hungry to talk and anxious to get ourselves fed before another alarm hit off.

This job of mine is crucial but also strangely whimsical. No building is worth my life. Yet long after the occupants have evacuated themselves, we often charge into burning buildings in our zeal to put the "wet stuff on the red stuff" as the old-timers say. Which is not to say that I quibble with our aggressive style of firefighting. There's always a kid hiding under a bed or an invalid in a back room until we prove otherwise, but when one of our own died fighting fire in an empty building two years ago, it gave all of us pause.