Feeling the heat from family legacy

STOW - I was breathing from a tank for the first time in my life, still a bit unconvinced air was coming my way, when a door swung open, and a man in yellow was shouting for me to grab the breach nozzle on the 1.75-inch attack line. I opened it up and the instructor guided the hose from top to bottom, extinguishing a small straw fire set in the doorway for the drill. Then we were inside.

The instructor grabbed me by the jacket. I couldn't even see his hand. The heat was amazing, but what really got my blood pumping was that I had no idea where I was going. Was my next step down a flight of stairs? Into a wall? Into a wall of fire?

It was a hot day, 95 degrees, on June 9, the day I visited the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy in Stow. But that felt like air conditioning compared with the burn building, the structure that offered a taste of real firefighting to the 72 cadets who had come in for another day of training. They faced four live burn exercises scheduled for the morning session.

I was also suiting up, heading into the building with the recruits to experience these exercises firsthand. My father, a career firefighter from Connecticut, would be there to see his son learn something about running into a live fire.

As the instructors strapped me into the turnout coat, air pack, and other gear, the temperature rose with my heart rate. For me, this represented the route not taken. Before discovering journalism, I had gone to Northeastern University to study criminal justice, intent on following my family into the firehouse, or maybe the police station.

Deep down, I knew I was safe, but I realized that in a real fire, no one was leading these guys by the jacket through the safe spots. It was a lesson about the job I had romanticized while growing up, that it isn't simply about lights and sirens, and the camaraderie of the station house. It is a dangerous job that can tear into your psyche.

While I tried to stop and control my breathing, the thought crossed my mind - what if this was real? What if someone was counting on me to pull them out of the flames?

Later, during lunch, I asked my father about that. Do any of the victims stay with you?

"I have to tell myself two things," he told me. "One, I didn't cause what happened here. And two, I'm not making it any worse."

JOHN M. GUILFOIL