Texas Mayday: What We Learned

12/01/2012

BY JOHN WRIGHT
"That's it; I'm dead. They are going to find my body under this window and my son will grow up
never knowing his father." A chain reaction of events had led up to that thought-some of them
my fault, some of them out of my control. Conditions had deteriorated to the point that I had
accepted my fate and was making preparations to get as small as I could on the floor and take
what was coming.
The shift started at 7 a.m. on June 17, 2011, as usual. We had a very routine day: truck checks,
payroll, station chores, and our preplan assignments. The wind was blowing hard that morning,
and it was already dry since we were in one of the worst droughts in several decades. I
remember thinking that if we caught a fire today, things were going to get very interesting. We
made it through the day without anything more than a couple of medical calls and were winding
down for the night. Shortly after 9 p.m., the station speakers opened up with the all call tones for
a reported structure fire.

THE FIRE
At approximately 9:14 p.m., the Flower Mound (TX) Dispatch Center received a 911 call from a
citizen reporting a house fire in the 2100 block of Northview Court. The temperature was 90F,
winds were out of the south at 30 miles per hour (mph), gusting to 40 mph. The fire building was
a two-story, 3,500-square-foot, single-family residence. Construction consisted of wood frame
with brick veneer and a composition shingle roof. The house had an attached three-car garage
with a 10- 10-foot work area. The exposures on each side were of the same size and
construction, and each had a 15-foot separation from the fire building.

ARRIVAL
Initial company size-up noted heavy fire conditions involving an attached three-car garage. On
arrival, the battalion chief immediately requested a second-alarm response.
The initial-arriving engine company was assigned interior fire attack. The captain and firefighter
advanced a 2-inch attack line through the front door to the garage entry door just off the
interior corridor. The truck crew and personnel from the light and air support unit began a
primary search of the first floor. The outside ventilation man (OVM), the sixth firefighter off the
ladder truck, was working on securing the utilities and started throwing ladders to the secondstory windows at the rear of the building. Initial reports noted that the family dog was inside and
that the homeowners' location was unknown. An early report said that a cell phone was heard
ringing inside, reinforcing a suspicion that the house was still occupied.

I remember thinking as we arrived on the scene, "Okay, we have fought two fires similar to this
one recently." In both cases, the fire was knocked down with a 2-inch line, and crews spent
the next few hours pulling the garage apart with pike poles and mopping up with handlines. As
the third company on scene behind the ladder truck, I told my firefighter, Gus Trujillo, to grab
pike poles, anticipating an assignment to either back up the engine company on the 2-inch
line or deploy a second line to the garage. When we reached the command post, we were
assigned to perform a primary search of the second floor. It wasn't the assignment that I
anticipated, and we didn't have any of the tools that we needed to conduct a search. By this
time, the garage was fully involved and fire had broken through the roof. I didn't think I had time
to run back to our engine and get new tools, so we decided to make entry with what we had.
Since this was a typical two-story house, I assumed we would be in and out relatively quickly.
Trujillo and I entered the structure through the front door and proceeded up the curved staircase
to the second-floor landing. I decided to begin a left-hand search because that was the area
closest to where the fire was. The smoke conditions were floor to ceiling but not too terribly hot.
At this time, I did not believe that the fire had left the garage. When we passed crew members
from the first-arriving engine company, it looked as if they were starting to make progress on the
fire. What I did not hear over the radio was that they were pulling out of the building because
they were running out of air. Because of our limited resources, another crew was not available
to staff a hoseline at that time, and Trujillo and I were now without any protection from the fire
below. The first room we encountered turned out to be a bedroom immediately above the
garage, and I was almost positive that we would find someone in the bed. Fortunately, the room
was empty, and we continued on with our search.

WE'RE IN TROUBLE
As we moved in a left-hand pattern, we encountered a small bathroom. I sent Trujillo in to
search it; it was also clear. The third room we encountered in our search was what we now
know was a study. Immediately on entering the room, I saw an air-conditioning return air vent
cover about 18 inches above the floor midway along the wall (photo 1). The vent cover was
glowing red, with obvious fire behind it. It was like looking into a furnace. I turned to Trujillo and
told him that we had fire in the walls and we needed to move. He is an aggressive firefighter and
a hard worker. So when he heard "fire in the walls," his initial reaction was to open the wall up
and get to work on the fire. Instantly, it became very obvious that this was a mistake. Fueled by
heavy south winds, a column of flames quickly shot across the room. Trujillo recalls seeing the
small hole rapidly growing in size as the brittle gypsum board gave way to the consuming
flames. This immediately disoriented us, and we spun around to exit the room. In our haste to
leave, we overshot the entrance and ended up going deeper into the room. In my mind, we were
in the hallway about to hit the stairs. I even had my hands out in front of me looking for the
banister. Visibility was even worse now, but I was able to make out a hole in the wall with heavy
flames pouring through it-the same hole that we just opened up. The reality of the situation hit
me like a ton of bricks. We were still in the same room-and obviously lost.

(1) The wall containing the airconditioning vent. (Photos by

author unless otherwise
noted.)

CALLING THE MAYDAY

I grabbed the lapel microphone from my radio strap and transmitted a Mayday. "Second floor,
left-hand search. We've got fire coming through the walls; we're lost." It wasn't a complete
Location, Unit, Name, Actions, Resources needed (LUNAR) report, but it was all I could get out
amid the rapidly deteriorating conditions. Up to this point, no one on the scene had any
suspicion that the fire was anywhere except the garage. The configuration of the house included
several small void spaces behind the walls of the room that we were in (photo 2). The heavy
winds had pushed the fire into these areas-all it needed was a way through. So when the
Mayday transmission came across the radio, it took everyone by complete surprise. Command
asked me to repeat the Mayday, just to confirm that what he was hearing was really happening.
My second transmission was, "Second floor, left-hand search; we're lost!" When I let go of the
radio microphone, it fell to the ground. I apparently had a death grip on it and had pulled it off
the leather strap to which it was affixed.

(2) In this exterior view of the

wall in photo 1, note the large
voids where fire had been
growing behind the wall,
fanned by wind blowing
toward the structure.
When I called the first Mayday, Trujillo recognized that the situation was bad. Up to that point,
he assumed that his captain had the situation under control and that we would be out in the
front yard at any moment. He said hearing the Mayday transmission is what made him switch
gears and go into self-rescue mode. His rookie school training kicked in. He quickly located a
window, one of two side-by-side sash windows. He raised one up and immediately slammed it
shut, realizing that he was creating a vent hole for the fire to exit. The flames pushed me back
against the same wall, and I hit the window blinds. I ripped the blinds down, and Trujillo asked if
we should bail out. I said yes. He reopened his window. The windows' openings were small,
approximately 24 inches square and 44 inches above the floor. We were standing shoulder to
shoulder, each in front of his own window (photo 3). He was able to look out of his window and
see that there was a small section of roof directly under them. He attempted to go out head first
and realized that his self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) was hitting the top of the
window frame. He took off his harness, leaving his mask on, and set it out the window onto the
roof. He quickly followed and was clear of the room and on the roof. Instead of jumping free of
the windows, which were now allowing heavy amounts of smoke and fire through, he turned
around to help me get through.

(3) Seeking to escape, we

went past the room's doorway,
ending up at this window, on
the opposite side of the room
pictured in photos 1 and 2.
The large center window
opening was actually two
separate side-by-side sash
windows (see red lines) later
destroyed by the fire.
I was having the same problems getting out of the window as he was, and since I was larger
than he is, it was clear that it was going to be difficult. I never saw the roof and assumed that
once out of the window I would be falling to the ground. By that time, I didn't care. The room was
nearly fully involved at this point, and I was starting to feel my skin burning. I remember hearing
him tell me to take my bottle off, but I wasn't about to give it up. I had been taught to loosen the
straps on the SCBA to drop the bottle lower, creating a lower profile. That still wasn't enough to
make it out, and the gravity of my situation was rapidly becoming clear. Panic gave way to sheer
terror, and my ability to reason diminished rapidly. The fact that Trujillo was still directly in front
of me didn't even register-I was still assuming that once out of the window, I would be falling
directly to the ground.
By this time, we were both pounding on the windows trying to make a larger opening. Since I
had dropped my pike pole, all I had left were my hands. Although the glass was shattering, it
was not falling out of the window. It turned out that it was double-pane insulated glass with a
solar screen film attached to the outermost layer. It was then that I had accepted the fact that I
was not going to make it out of the room. A wave of sadness flooded what was left of my
conscious thought because I realized I was going to burn to death in that room right under the
window. I realized that it was going to hurt, and all I could think of to do was to lie down and try
to cover up as best as I could. I was about to drop to my knees when the memory of every lineof-duty death report I had ever read saturated my mind. It was almost as if I were looking at the
text, crystal clear with every detail. I remembered all of the reports that mentioned a firefighter
being found dead under a window, on the hoseline, directly under a ladder, or two feet from an

exterior door. I remembered reading those reports and thinking, "Brother! You were so close to
freedom! What happened that kept you from that last two feet?" I didn't want that to be me, so I
decided to give it one more try. I jumped up against the wall and got as much of my torso
through the window as I could.
Unbeknownst to me, Trujillo was fighting for his life on the roof. When he took his harness off
and set it on the ridge of the roof, it started sliding off. He had unclipped his regulator because
the bottle was pulling his mask off his face. He never left my sight and was constantly trying to
get a hold of anything to grab onto. The flames were blowing through the window, and every
breath he took was filled with superheated gas and direct flames. He was able to steal a few
breaths by ducking his face mask down behind the neck flap on his coat. Struggling to stay
conscious, Trujillo determined that he had one last chance to get me out. He leaned in and
grabbed the straps of my SCBA just as I was leaning out for my last try. He planted his feet
against the wall and leaned back, ripping me through the window onto the roof. Never in my life
have I ever felt so much relief. I would have been content to lie there on the roof the rest of the
night, but we still weren't safe. The fire was venting out of the windows, directly over our heads.
At this point, I wasn't able to see anything. I was holding onto what I thought was a vent pipe on
the roof, which turned out to be the toe of Trujillo's firefighter boot. I don't know if it was the
heavy smoke or my body shutting down that obscured my vision.
While I was in the room, everything was dark except for a very small circle directly in front of
me. I was also not able to hear anything other than muffled voices. My pain receptors were in
full working order, and I could tell that I had burns to my back, my right arm, and the back of my
head. Trujillo told me to get off the roof, and I started pushing off looking for the ledge with my
feet. We did not know that the OVM from the ladder truck heard the glass breaking and set a
ground ladder to the roof to which we were clinging. He made it to the top of the ladder just as I
was pushing off to jump. He grabbed my boot and guided me over to the tip of the ladder. I
reached over and felt roof hooks and realized that we were only 16 feet from the ground. Up to
that point, I had assumed that we were on the highest peak of the house and that we were
looking at a drop of more than 20 feet. I got one foot on the ladder and tried to jump off the side.
The OVM was at the tip of the ladder; a second firefighter from an ambulance company was
heeling it. Another firefighter was on a hoseline trying to keep the flames off our back as we
came off the roof. The OVM firefighter said that he fought me the entire way down the ladder,
trying to keep me on it. At about three feet from the ground, he had enough of me and let me
jump. I don't necessarily remember this, but it did not surprise me.
Once I was on the ground, Trujillo descended the ladder, and it was radioed that our engine
company was in the backyard. Command acknowledged and called for a personnel
accountability report to affirm that all units were accounted for. Once on the ground, I noticed a
swimming pool in the backyard. I must have been making my way toward it because the guys
on the ground started yelling, "Don't you get in that pool!" In my next clear memory, I was in the
front yard looking up at Chief Rick Lasky from the Lewisville (TX) Fire Department. He had
arrived on the scene as part of our second-alarm assignment and walked up just as I had made
the Mayday transmission. I don't recall how I got to the front yard, but the guys on scene said
they walked me there. At that moment, I still had issues with my hearing, and all I could tell from
Lasky's facial expressions was that he was speaking to me. Talking with him after the fire, he
said that I had a very distant gaze and that I was saying over and over, "You're looking at a
ghost." He later explained to me that firefighters who are trapped often don't know that they are
out once they are rescued and they often do things that are very irrational. These irrational
behaviors are further complicated if the firefighter is hypoxic (deprived of oxygen) because of

smoke inhalation. Lasky was watching me very closely to make sure that I wouldn't cause
further injury to myself or others.
After a few minutes, all of my senses came back at once, and I was able to respond to his
questions. The SCBA that Trujillo had left on the roof was in full alarm from the personal alert
safety system (PASS) device, and it was not clear whether a third member was still inside. He
had me put my hands on Trujillo and asked us both several times if there was anyone else still
inside. Once it was established that all members were accounted for, the battalion chief
switched the operation to a defensive mode while everyone reset and regained their bearings.

GETTING BACK TO NORMAL

The fire was eventually extinguished. The garage was a total loss, as was the room from which
we had escaped (photo 4). The crews still on scene did a great job getting back to work and
saved most of the structure. However, the building was eventually demolished down to the slab.
It seems that it's almost cheaper these days to build a new house than to try and repair one with
fire damage. Trujillo and I were taken to an ambulance and transported to Parkland Memorial
Hospital in Dallas, the closest burn center.

(4) The crews on scene

continued working after Trujillo
and I were transported to the
hospital. Our bunker gear is in
the foreground. (Photo by
Sheri Baldwin.)

OUR INJURIES
I had second-degree burns to my back, my right wrist, and the back of my head. The heat
melted the hardware on my helmet, and the outer shell separated from the harness. I avoided
serious burns to my neck by having the ear flaps down and my hood on properly (photos 5, 6).
The heat damaged my coat (photo 7) and melted most of the plastic on my SCBA (photo 8).

(5) The inner liner and outer

shell of my helmet separated
during the fire.

(6) The helmet ear flap helped

to protect my neck and ears
from severe burns. If the flap
had not been deployed, the
firefighter hood would have
been of little help.

(7) The right arm of my turnout

coat.

(8) The intense heat damaged

the second stage regulator.
Trujillo received second-degree burns to his mouth and nose and inhalation burns to his upper
airway (photo 9). He spent the next week coughing up black phlegm and still suffers from an
injury to his wrist. To date, he has had two surgeries to repair a tendon that snapped loose from
his finger and rolled down to the base of his wrist. The injury is thought to have occurred while
he was trying to break the window frame while I was trying to exit. The burn on my wrist was
from his hand: While he was getting me out of the window, he compressed the hot fabric of my
gear around my skin, and the imprint of his fingers and thumb are still clearly visible. It is a
constant reminder of his unyielding dedication to what the brotherhood stands for. I hope the
scar never fades, because if it weren't for him, I would have died in that room (photos 10, 11).

(9) Firefighter Gus Trujillo

suffered burns to his upper lip
and nose.

(10) When superheated

turnout material was
compressed around my wrist
during the rescue

(11) it caused severe burns to

my wrist.
He is also credited for potentially saving the lives of the rapid intervention crew (RIC) that was
coming up the stairs looking for us. He was able to get to his radio and deliver the message that
we were on the roof and on the way down. The RIC captain heard this transmission and
stopped just short of entering the room. The remainder of the crews on scene demonstrated
incredible self-control and resisted the urge to go running into the building to look for us when
the Mayday was declared. Radio traffic ceased, and all nonessential communications moved to
a different channel.

MAYDAY TRAINING PAYS OFF

The department had been training and drilling in Mayday and survival procedures for months.
Couple this with previous drills using mazes and acquired structures, and personnel had the
opportunity to simulate potential scenarios. We tackled the Mayday training in several phases. It
started with a classroom portion that reviewed our standard operating guidelines and the
appropriate times to call for help. Once all personnel were trained, we went to a drill tower and
ran through several scenarios that would require a Mayday. Following that, we would slip a
Mayday scenario into routine training and ensure that crews were proficient in asking for help.
You can't do Mayday training once a year or once every other year and expect to be proficient.
This is true for any training we do. It has been said that you don't rise to the occasion when
things start to go bad; you sink to your lowest level of training. You don't have time to fumble
through acronyms or perform a series of complex knots and harnesses to bail out of a window
unless you can do these things with one arm tied behind your back hopping on one foot. Your
core training is what is going to save you, and if your core training consists of what you learned
in rookie school 20 years ago, the outcome might not go the way you want. Train often and train
hard, even when it's not the popular thing to do at the firehouse because "it's too hot outside" or
"it's too close to lunch."

KEEPING OTHERS OUT OF TROUBLE

As embarrassing as this personal experience is to tell, I feel it needs to be shared. Speaking

with firefighters from all over the area, I have learned of many incidents similar to this one that
were swept under the rug. There's no reason to air dirty laundry, right? But we all make
mistakes-it's human nature. Sharing your successes and your failures will help save lives.
Holding on to your failures can have the opposite effect. Firefighter Trujillo and I have been
traveling to area departments sharing this story, which has been well received. For those we
cannot get to, I have created a Web site at www.texasmayday.com that includes all of the
pictures, videos, dispatch audio, and associated files so people can still put together a class to
deliver to their department. Feel free to use any of the information on that Web site.

LESSONS LEARNED
We all learned a considerable amount from our experience. Since then, we have been teaching
the lessons learned as well as sharing the thought process that we had from the time the
Mayday was called to its termination. What surprised me the most was how quickly my ability to
make calm, rational decisions deteriorated. I joke that the first thing out the window when we
opened the windows up was my reason. But that is the honest truth. It is embarrassing that I
allowed so many errors to pile up to land us in a situation like that, but they are errors many of
us make. So to reduce the chance of a similar situation occurring, here are the lessons we
learned.
Be ready to switch gears. I had an idea of what I was going to be doing, and it took me a
moment to adjust to an assignment (searching the second floor, not pulling ceiling) that I was
not anticipating. I had the fire completely put out in my head before I got to the command post,
and I should have been ready to ditch that plan and start from scratch.
Bring the right tools for the job. We entered that house with firefighting tools. But when it
came time to breach the windows, the pike poles we had with us were useless. The fire had us
pinned against the wall, and we had no room to back up and break the glass with an eight-foot
pike pole.
Don't mix fire attack techniques with search-and-rescue tactics. We opened a wall up that
allowed the fire to enter the room. We should have stuck to doing a rapid search and left the
walls intact. We knew where the fire was; we didn't have to go looking for it. There is a good
chance that the fire would have broken through on its own, but we will never know what effect
that would have had.
When you are in command of an incident, be ready for a Mayday at any stage. The
battalion chief was completely surprised, as was everyone else on scene, that a crew was lost
inside a routine structure fire. It took him a few moments to switch gears, and he was lucky that
we were able to repeat the Mayday transmission. Also, distractions near the command post had
pulled him away from the radio, making it even harder to understand what we needed.
Muscle memory is vitally important. It allows you to perform complex tasks without having
to dedicate conscious thought. However, muscle memory can be devastating if you are
unknowingly doing the wrong things. For example, I was trying to activate my PASS alarm. I
kept double-clicking the side button over and over, and it never sounded. The reason for this is
that the side button is what you use to reset it.

So why was I hitting that? Because I hit that button every time I check my SCBA out in the
morning and every time I take it off. So several hundred times a year, I click the yellow button,
but I only click the big red one maybe 10 times. I also had a fully functioning thermal imaging
camera (TIC). But I never reached down and picked it up. I clip it to my belt on every fire alarm
call, and I walk around the building with it dangling from my SCBA, never needing to use it. So
when the time came that I needed it, I didn't even think to pick it up. To correct these two issues,
every time I need to reset my SCBA, I hit the red button first, then the reset button. It will make
more noise, but when I grab that part of the SCBA, my hand will instinctively go for the right
button. I still clip the TIC to my SCBA on all calls where I am in my bunker gear, but before I
enter the building (whether it's a routine fire alarm call or a working fire), I pick it up, click it on,
and look at the screen. This also allows me to see what a normal building looks like so I can
compare it to a building with active fire involvement. It also gets me in the habit of grabbing the
TIC instead of letting it swing around, banging into the walls.
Don't wait until something bad happens before you commit to do things right. Just
because you have never been hurt on the job doing things unsafely doesn't mean that you will
always get away with it. I'm a perfect example of this, and it defines complacency to a "T." I have
taken the lessons learned from this incident and completely changed the way I fight fire and
respond to incidents. It embarrasses me on a personal level that I needed to get hurt before I
made the decision to do things right.
There is no excuse for this. We know what kills us and what gets us hurt. There are thousands
of firefighters who learned it the hard way, and for us to continue to behave unsafely knowing
that those actions have already taken lives is a disservice to their memory. This doesn't just
include fighting fires. Not using seat belts, driving too fast in personal vehicles to calls, cardiac
issues, stepping out into traffic without looking at an accident scene-these are still killing us, and
we choose to hide behind the veil of "This won't happen to me." This job is always trying to kill
us; there is no sense in making it easier to accomplish that goal.
Call for help the second you know that you are in trouble. We did this right. I didn't
hesitate to call for help, and it made the difference between life and death. Waiting to call for
help not only puts you and your crew in danger, but it also makes the environment that much
more dangerous for the crews coming to get you. History has proven that we will line up around
the building for the chance to march to our deaths to try and save a fallen comrade. We
calculated that the room flashed 10 to 30 seconds after we cleared the windows. If we had
decided to make one more attempt to find our way back out, it would have killed us both and
possibly the crew coming to our rescue.
"Sidewalk Shepherds." I have been guilty of this mentality. You arrive on scene to a fully
involved apartment building fire with victims jumping from the third-floor balcony, and the
incident commander assigns you to the RIC. "Oh, great! I get to stand out here and watch all the
guys in there fighting the dragon from the sidewalk." You aren't being put in "time out"! You are
the crew responsible for saving the lives of all the firefighters on scene!
The third-arriving engine company on scene was immediately assigned to RIC, taking over from
an ambulance crew. But instead of standing on the sidewalk and pouting, that crew snapped
into action. The RIC captain did a walkaround and noted exterior doors and windows. He looked
at where the fire was and where it was going. He confirmed interior crews' locations and set up
at the front of the building with all of the tools he thought he might need. As soon as he made a
face-to-face with his firefighter, the Mayday was called. He made it to the top of the stairs and

saw a fully involved room. He turned back to his firefighter and told him, "Stay here-I'm going in
to get them." Just before he would have crossed the threshold and entered the room, he heard
my firefighter radio to command that we were coming off the roof. He wouldn't have lasted long
in that room-the flashover that almost got us would have killed or seriously injured him. I am
eternally grateful that he took his assignment seriously that night. Although he didn't make it to
where we were, he made the decision to crawl into a fully involved room, if necessary, to help
his comrades.
Complacency kills. How many times have you heard that? I've heard it at every training class
that covered any form of firefighter safety. I've seen it on the Internet and in magazines, and I
never once thought it was addressing me. Complacency kills you! It doesn't matter if you work
for the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) or the Flower Mound (TX) Fire Department. It
doesn't just happen in high-rise buildings or large warehouses.
Our incident happened in a 10- 10-foot room on a routine garage fire. It's difficult to do things
right all the time, and you will still make mistakes. But you owe it to yourself, your family, and
your crew to make the best effort to do the job the right way. This also means that you might
have to call crew members out when you see them doing something they shouldn't be doing. It's
not always going to be the popular thing to do, but will you be able to look at yourself in the
mirror if you see someone doing something dumb and, as a result, that member was killed or
seriously injured? I overheard an excellent quote from a chief talking to his guys about
complacency, and it really drove the point home: "If you have a good reason to not wear your
gear or act unsafe on the fireground, write that down so I can read it to your wife if something
happens to you. Because I will not know what to tell her."
When you can't see your feet ... you need to be crawling. Have you heard that before? I
hate crawling; it kills my knees. We don't have basements in our region of the country, and I've
tripped over many things before and never fallen into a bottomless pit. You want to know what
hurts more than bruised knees? How about being stuck to the bedsheets in the morning
because your bandages fell off during the night? I think part of the reason we got so disoriented
in the room moments after the wall was opened up was that we were standing. We bumped into
each other and instead of doing a 180 turn, turning in the opposite direction, we did a 360 and
turned all the way around. Had we been crawling, we could have seen under the smoke enough
to find the door-or maybe not; there is no way to tell now. But I can assure you from now on, I'll
pick sore knees any day.
Check your ego. I truly hope that we as an industry have gotten past the days where people
were made fun of for calling for help on the fireground. I thought about that the whole way home
from the hospital. I didn't think I would ever live this down. "Hey, remember that day when
Captain Wright was screaming for help like a little kid, lost in a 10- 10-foot room?" I walked
through the front door of my house at 4:30 a.m. and saw my three-year-old son asleep on the
couch. A family friend had come over to watch him while my wife met me at the hospital. I
thought how nice it must be to be soundly sleeping, completely unaware that his daddy was
clinging to life on the second floor of a stranger's house hours before. I picked him up, felt the
sting in my arm as the bandages rubbed against the burns, and kissed him on the forehead.
And then it hit me. I got to go home and kiss my son on the forehead, whereas six hours prior I
had given up on ever seeing him again. I could care less what you say about me. Yes, I was
crying for help lost in a 10- 10-foot room. Yes, I had to be pulled through a window because I
didn't have the strength to do it myself. Asking for help played a big role in allowing me to go

home that night. And to me, nothing is more important than that. There are a thousand ways to
die on this job; this is just one of them. Granted, it's not the worst thing that has ever happened
to a firefighter, but it was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I sincerely hope that
you read this and think, "I've never made a single one of those mistakes," but if you have, I hope
that you have made the decision to work at being a safer firefighter.

Share this story with those around you-with your crew, your fellow firefighters, and your
neighboring departments. In the words of an incredible fire service leader, retired FDNY Deputy
Chief Vincent Dunn, "In order for a firefighter to survive the dangers of firefighting, he must know
how other firefighters have died or been seriously injured." Take the time to learn about what is
killing us. The stories from our fallen brothers and sisters are, unfortunately, in great supply.
JOHN WRIGHT is a 17-year veteran of the fire service and captain assigned to Station 5 of the
Flower Mound (TX) Fire Department, with which he has served for 14 years. He served as a
volunteer firefighter for the Huntsville (TX) Fire Department and is a certified hazmat technician,
a fire instructor II, an advanced firefighter, a driver/operator, and a licensed paramedic. He has a
bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Sam Houston State University and an associate
degree in paramedicine from North Central Texas College.