Ryan LaPrade ventilates the second floor by breaking a window

Photo Credit: Daniel Castro

A fully dressed fire hydrant, ready to go.

Photo Credit: Daniel Castro

Hay - the leading cause of house fires in most controlled house fires.

Photo Credit: Daniel Castro

A room with a view

Photo Credit: Daniel Castro

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HOLDEN, Mass. — The town of Holden looks different from inside a fire truck. Facing backwards and looking out past the ladder, I can see farther, and I notice every house and business more than when I'm just driving my car.

I wonder about the people as we pass their neighborhoods, the kids in the schools, the girl at the coffee shop — the whole town goes by in a blur, and the moment feels ready to ignite.

The home we reach is a small blue single-family with a white door and a nice little front yard. It's an old house, but one that at one time was probably perfect to raise a family in. I wonder how many had lived there; how long it's been a part of that neighborhood. And I feel a little bad, because I know that it's about to go up in flames, and I really can't help but be excited.

Set to be torn down, the homeowner offered the Holden Fire Department the chance to use the old structure for live fire training. It's an opportunity that firefighters have to take advantage of in order to be better prepared for the real thing.

The live fires would allow firefighters to practice hose advancement, ventilation, search and rescue, company operations and incident command. As a young and fresh auxiliary member, this was my first time getting to see a structure fire from inside, and see how I would react to being that close to the heat.

Inside, the home is mostly vacant. All of the furniture has been replaced by square bales of hay stacked up in piles and wooden pallets — you know, the typical cause of house fires. The only thing that recalled the home that it once was is the old yellow wallpaper, the pattern of ships going up and down the walls.

We would be doing a little redecorating.

Nothing major... just a little splashed water, some char for the walls, a few broken windows and a bunch of holes in the walls and ceiling — just to open up the place a little bit.

My first job of the day was to dress the fire hydrant in front of the house, getting it ready to be connected to the pumper, which would then send water through the lifeline of hoses. I'd done it before, but still needed a refresher. A more experienced firefighter named Chuck Borowy guided me through the process, starting with removing the caps, attaching the valves and then slowly opening up the water.

It's a small but important job. Do it right, and I've set the stage for a successful attack on a roaring fire. Do it wrong and the back pressure could cause a water line to rupture and give the DPW a headache and a new project. Needless to say I tried to do it right.

But once the pumper was all set up, the hose lines all readied, and the fire scenarios organized inside, it was finally time to for me to go in and help knock down some flames.

We separated into teams, and I was put on Engine 1 under company officer Lt. Sean Smith, along with Borowy, Ryan LaPrade and James Hanna. In the first scenario, we were going in as primary to attack a living room fire.

We have all of our gear on. Fireproof pants and jackets, helmets, hoods and gloves. I strap on my SCBA oxygen pack, which is heavy on my shoulders.

"Is everybody ready," asked Lt. Andy Miller, who was running the day's training. Everybody answers in the affirmative.

"Yes, but," I say, holding up my oxygen mask, "how does this thing work?"

I can see his face falls a little. Clearly I wouldn't be going into the fire this scenario.

Miller tells me to stay outside the threshold and help feed hose to the guys inside. "Humping hose," it's called. Jokes are ripe. Essentially I stay behind and feel for tugs at the line as my crew goes into extinguish the flames, making sure nothing gets snagged or kinked.

Even still, I'm excited to be on the first attack, and from just outside I watch as the guys go into the burning home, one by one, without any fear or hesitation. They disappear as dark smoke billows out the door, and I try and sneak glances through the window at the fire. Without my pack, the taste of smoke is dry and fills my lungs, so I get low to let it pass over my head. I want to be inside, but I know my role, and do my job. They make short work of the fire and come out safe.

But not wanting to pass up another shot at seeing fire, I get Borowy to give me a run-through of using the air pack. It's a funny device: made up of an air tank, a regulator, and an inhalation connection that goes onto your mask.

The pack is also equipped with what's called a PASS device, or Personal Alert Safety System. If a firefighter should stop moving for some reason, the device senses it, and starts beeping. The longer the firefighter is down, the louder it gets, helping to alert others of his distress.

It's a pretty vital safety feature, but it goes off whenever the pack is on — whether or not you're in danger.

So here we are, 25 firefighters on the front lawn of a burn house with our packs on, and all of our the devices beeping sporadically. So basically we all have to keep wiggling around mid-conversation to make sure our alarms don't go off. You'd think I was doing some sort of fireman's shuffle.

More importantly, with a newfound understanding of how to properly use my lifesaving pack, I was now ready to join my crew inside.

Later in the day, my moment finally came. For most of the training, I had been humping hose outside and picking up tips here and there. Listening intently as the Lt. explained how to properly vent windows, asking questions about hose pressure, and just trying to glean everything I could.

But during one of the last fires, as I was watching excitedly from just outside the front door, Miller grabbed my shoulder and told me to go inside.

"Just stay with me," he said.

I listened. I followed him in. I sucked at my air and made my way through the thick smoke. I could barely see a thing at first, but once I got to the fire, its bright orange heat shined through the billows. The busy sound of popping and wood cracking and crashing was constant. The glowing fire climbed up the walls in what was probably once a parlor. I watched as firefighters broke apart the pallets and knocked down the flames with the hose. I got as close as I could without getting in their way. Even through the protective gear, my body felt incredibly hot standing next to the fire.  Deep under my mask, I was smiling. It was incredible.

Miller tagged my arm again. "I'm running out of air," he said. My time was up.

I went back outside and tried to go right back to work feeding the hose. But I didn't feel the same. It was just a few minutes up and close with the flames, but they had made their impression. I felt the heat in my circulation, the fire in my blood.

When the day was done, we drove back to the station in the truck. I looked out through the windows at the town again, as we went by the same stores, buildings and homes that we passed on the way in. But this time I thought about how safe the community would be, thanks to trainings like these.

While real structures fires, ideally, are few and far between, the members of the HFD are constantly preparing for the scenario. They are always ready to make their way into a burning home — homes still filled with the belongings and memories of the people that live there — and attack the heat. It's training that could mean a huge difference in the minutes it takes to put down a fire, or thousands of dollars of burn damage, or even between life and death.

We pull into the station, and with the others I take off my gear to hang it up. As I put away my helmet, I look into the locker and see my name, D. Castro, on a label above it. I smiled again. For the rest of the day, I could still taste the fire, and smell it in my clothes and hair. I was a smokeater now. It felt real.

This is the part of a continuing series following reporter Daniel Castro's progression through the Holden Auxiliary Firefighter's program.