April 12, 2008

"With that signature," a man in a blue and orange jumpsuit uniform behind a desk at a fire station open house explained to a light brown-haired girl in a sweater and jeans. "You'll be all set."

"Thank you," the girl replied as she bowed. "You guys did wonders for me when I was younger, and I want to give back." She then pulled up one of the legs of her jeans and revealed a prosthetic leg underneath. "I'd never let this stop me."

"I'm glad you feel that way, Ibarazaki-san," the man in the uniform replied. Suddenly, however, he turned to another girl in the crowd of people. "Wait a minute... Is that...?"

Emi Ibarazaki turned around and saw a familiar face looking around in the fire station. "Ikezawa-san? From Yamaku Academy?"

The violet-haired girl, who had her long hair partially obscuring her face, turned around at the mention of her name and said, "Huh? Well, uh..."

"Do you remember me?" Emi then walked up to Hanako Ikezawa. "I'm Ibarazaki-san. We graduated together a few weeks ago."

"Oh yeah," Hanako quietly replied. "Now I remember. I was here checking things out in my hometown."

"Wait a minute," Emi replied with confusion. "You live in Shichigahama too?"

"Yeah," she replied. "I always did, even after the fire."

"I used to live here until the accident," Emi replied. "Well, no shit, what a coincidence. Me and my mom just moved back here since I graduated." She then pointed to the table she was just at, which was labeled "VOLUNTEER RECRUITMENT." "I signed up to be a volunteer firefighter. I've wanted to give back to the people that saved my life all those years ago for a while now."

The man at the table, named Gasai Hiroto, recognized Hanako and walked up to the two of them. "Pardon the interruption. Are you Ikezawa Hanako?"

"Yes," she replied, unsure why he was interested in her. "Why do you ask?"

"I helped save your life ten years ago," he explained to her.

Hanako froze as she realized he was right. She recognized him as the firefighter that had rescued her. "I... You..."

...

July 11, 1998

"Standby Station 51, 52." A dispatcher at the Miyagi District Fire Dispatch Center then pressed in two sets of codes on a keypad, sending out tones over the radio channel he had been transmitting on that would alert firefighters and set off firehouse sirens. Both of his partners were still on the phone with the two callers and gathering more information. "Miyagi District Fire Control for Station 51 and 52, Chief 50, respond to (ADDRESS REMOVED), (ADDRESS REMOVED), reported structure fire. Time is 00:09." It was very early in the morning, and the five fire departments (prior to consolidation of those five into a single department) the center dispatched did not see much activity at this time, especially Shichigahama, the smallest of the five.

It did not take long for a unit to answer up over the operations channel for Shichigahama. "Car 50-Alpha's responding, (ADDRESS REMOVED)." He was the career fire chief of the otherwise mostly-volunteer Shichigahama Town Fire Department.

"Car 50-Alpha at 3:10." He then turned to another dispatcher as they got off the phone with the original caller. "Anything new aside from there's a fire?"

"No," she replied to him. "The fire's somewhere in the back of the house according to the neighbor."

"Got it," he replied as he queues up his mic. "Miyagi District Fire Control to Car 50-Alpha, the first caller is reporting the fire is somewhere in the rear of the structure."

"50-Alpha received," he replied.

"Car 50-Bravo's responding," replied the volunteer assistant chief.

"At 00:10." The dispatcher then turned to a scanner that contained the police radio frequencies for the area, which were handled by a different dispatch center. They had dispatched two police cars to the fire scene soon after the fire department had been dispatched.

As he listened in, he heard a unit scream over the radio, "206 to Central, advise Miyagi District Fire Control I got a working house fire!"

"You heard him," the other partner, an older gentleman, told the dispatcher. "My caller says there may be someone still inside, by the way."

"Fire Control to all units responding to (ADDRESS REMOVED)," he transmitted. "I have police officers on the scene with a working house fire. I also have a report from a second caller there may be someone still inside the house."

...

At 00:15, Pumper 51 arrived on scene with two career firefighters and three volunteer firefighters. By then, all three chiefs had arrived, and one was inside actively searching for the victims, which were now in the plural since a family of three was trapped, and police officers were unable to reach them due to the intense heat. Four of the five firefighters onboard stepped off the pumper with their masks already on, ready to rush inside and put the fire out, while the fifth, the driver, jumped off and grabbed a long hard suction hose on the side to throw down into an in-ground hydrant. During the chaos, the four firefighters grabbed rolls of hose and rolled them out, each grabbing two 15 meter rolls and rolling them out to build two hose lines composed of four rolls each. One firefighter from each line then took a nozzle, while the other took either an axe or a halligan bar for search and forcible entry.

Two firefighters, one of whom was Hiroto, built their line first and raced to the door, which had already been forced in. They both clipped into their air packs and started breathing in air as they made their way into the house. As they crawled down the hallway through the thick and black smoke, Hiroto, behind the other firefighter on the line, radioed out, "Pumper 51 interior to Car 50-Charlie!"

"Go ahead," Car 50-Charlie replied deeper inside the building.

"Have you found any of the three victims?"

"I'm near the back bedroom," he replied. "I need a line over here to hit the fire! They said there's two of them in here! No one knows where the father is!"

"Got it," Hiroto replied. "Pumper 51, charge the line!" When he got no reply and no water for several seconds, he radioed back louder, "GET ME WATER, PUMPER 51!"

"Here it comes," Pumper 51's driver radioed back from the pump panel. Sure enough, it did not take long for their hose line to fill with water. As the two of them reached the back bedroom, they could hear but not see their deputy chief due to the heavy smoke. The heat from the fire in the room next door was oppressive.

"Hit the fire in there," the chief commanded them. "I'll grab the victims! When you knock it down, help me move them!"

"Got it," Hiroto replied. He then radioed out, "Interior to Command, I need two firefighters sent in to grab the Red Line from us. We gotta help Car 50-Charlie rescue two of the victims!"

"Received," Car 50-Alpha replied outside.

Hiroto then tapped the firefighter in front of him on the shoulder and said, "Hit the fire! The door's unlocked!"

"On it," he replied as he opened the door to the next room over and was met with a wall of flame. He then opened up the nozzle on the fire, darkening it down. As he knocked the fire down and advanced into the room, Hiroto stayed right behind him, feeding him more hose as the smoke blinded them once more. Suddenly, however, they both felt the heat rise inexplicably fast inside the room. "What the fuck?!" Then, in a flash, the room lit up, engulfing everything inside of it, including the firefighter ahead of Hiroto.

"HOLY SHIT," Hiroto screamed as he quickly ducked in and pulled his comrade from the room, disregarding the fact that he was fully engulfed in flames and screaming in intense pain. After Hiroto pulled him aside and out into the hallway, barely escaping the flames himself, he radioed out frantically, "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!" Meanwhile, the Blue Line, right behind them, was moving into the other room, attacking the fire, which had spread into the room the two victims that had been located were.

"Command on for the Mayday," Car 50-Alpha replied.

"This is Firefighter Gasai Hiroto," he frantically replied. "My partner was caught in a flashover in the back of the house! I think it got 50-Charlie and those two victims, too! I need assistance getting them all out! Somebody help me!"

"Received," he replied back. As he began delegating rescue assignments, The two firefighters on the Blue Line had just pulled 50-Charlie and the two victims out by themselves. 50-Charlie had been burned, but not as severely as Hiroto's partner, and was able to assist in his own rescue.

"The mom got burned real bad," he told them as he pried away the mom from her daughter. "She shielded the girl from the heat and flames when the flashover occurred!"

"Chief," Hiroto yelled over to him. "I got people coming! Shinohara-san got fucked up by that flashover! My line got destroyed!"

...

"So that's what happened," Emi said in the present day as Hiroto and Hanako finished the story. "I'm so sorry."

"Shinohara Tadashi never woke up," Hiroto explained further. "He died in a burn unit a week later. It was the first time Shichigahama Fire had a line of duty death since we had a chief die of a heart attack at a fire in the 60s, and the last before we merged with Shiogama Union Fire." He then sighed. "But enough of that. He'd be complaining right now if we got all down about something as trivial as his death. He always loved to bring people's moods up. Hell, his funeral, after all the formal ceremonies and the like, was pretty joyful. He said he wanted to have a bottle of Jim Bean buried with him, and we got like 30 of them donated to us after he died. All of them got buried under his grave. To top it off, his ashes accidentally got scattered on a bunch of us by a sudden gust of wind, and what was left was mixed with cake mix on a hunch by his wife. It's honestly exactly what he would have wanted, and I swear I could hear him laughing his ass off nearby."

Even Hanako, who took death seriously due to her past, could not help but laugh. "Wow... When that happens, God forbid, I kind of wish the mood won't be too solemn or gloomy, and some random event like that can bring people laughter."

"I hope I didn't scare either of you ladies away," Hiroto commented.

"It's fine," Emi replied, shrugging it off. "It's reality."

"Speaking of," Hanako replied as she bent over to look over an application. "I want in."

Hiroto was surprised, but pleasantly. "I see... Well, then just fill an application out here." He then handed the girl a pen. "Take all the time you need."

"Thank you," Hanako replied as she began to fill the application out. She then took a deep breath as she continued. She was a bit nervous, but was determined. "You saved my life, and I want to be able to save someone else's."

...

July 21, 2008

Today, at 8 in the morning, the Shiogama Union Fire Department's Volunteer Firefighter Summer Boot Camp began. This was to be three weeks, 40 hours per week, of training that would give volunteer firefighters in the department the skills needed to perform at a fire scene. The first week was for all volunteers, but the second and third weeks were for volunteers who would be going inside burning buildings like their paid counterparts, which Emi and Hanako would be doing. Emi, despite her prosthetic legs, was fully cleared to go ahead with training, as was Hanako. For this class, 28 students would meet at the headquarters of the Shiogama Union Fire Department every weekday at 8 in the morning, and only leave at 4 in the afternoon.

"At attention," the instructor of the class ordered the volunteers. All 28 of them immediately quieted themselves and stood side-by-side as the instructor, an older firefighter in his 50s, walked down the line. "Alright... Well, today is the day you start your training to become an Interior or Auxiliary Volunteer Firefighter with the Shiogama Union Fire Department. My name is Fujisaki Yasuhiro, and I have been a firefighter for 34 years, 26 of which I have made it a career. As I understand it, 9 of you will become Auxiliaries, and 19 of you will take the next step and become Interiors. In recent years, there has been a decline in the number of volunteer firefighters all across Japan, and the Miyagi District is no exception. I applaud all of you for coming forward to serve your communities on your own time. I myself started as a volunteer with the pre-merger Rifu Fire Department before I made it a career, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Now, you all must go through this training to adequately serve your communities. Your citizens are expecting you to give your 100% all the time, because at the end of the day, and pardon my language, but they don't give a flying fuck if you're paid to fight fires and ride on an ambulance or not when they need us. They expect you to perform just the same regardless. Don't think that just because you're a volunteer means you have an excuse to not perform your best. You make up the majority of our fire department, and without you, we cannot properly function."

Another instructor, female and younger than the previous one, then spoke up. "My name is Itou Taeko. I've been a volunteer firefighter ever since I was 20, so for 18 years. Before we merged in 1999, I was a volunteer with the Shichigahama Fire Department at Station 53. My father was also a volunteer for a long time. Our goal as fire instructors is not to break you or hurt you. Our goal is to ensure that no one's ghost comes back and says their training let them down. Our goal is to build you into firefighters. Even so, this is only the first step. I cannot stress enough that you need to keep training even after you complete this class. There are many training opportunities offered both by our fire department and by other fire departments, and I urge you all to look into them. For now, though, you are with us, and we expect you to be on your A-game every class."

Hanako thought to herself as the instructors continued, "This is it. This is the ultimate test. This will prove that I've grown from that day where I lost everything in that fire. This is the moment where I go from victim to savior."