Becoming the Storm
22 Hot Times
THE HOLIDAY TOURNEY that Whitney and her team went to was in Greenville, South Carolina. It was a little over five hundred miles down there and the team was flying. We all promised to listen to it on the University radio station. The only good part about the Hoosiers not having a lot of fans there was that no one else would either. The first game was on Sunday the third and no one was going to go back to school to watch women play basketball. The team’s Sunday night game was with Holy Cross, and they were nearly a thousand miles from their home turf in Massachusetts.
They’d just tipped off when our emergency radio squawked in the kitchen. I think in the year since we’d become volunteer firefighters, I’d heard it a total of three times. There had been a few more emergencies than that, but I couldn’t hear or respond to them when I was in class. Most of the volunteers were retired.
“We have a house fire at 420 Willow Lane,” the dispatcher called. “We need the pumper and the ladder. EMTs are being dispatched from Bloomington One.”
“This is Frank Carlisle. I’m five minutes from the truck and on my way.”
“Doc Hanford here. I’m right behind Frank. Send everyone else straight to the fire unless they are closer to the station.”
“Ranch, are you there?”
“This is Ranch,” I said. “We’re on our way straight to the site. That’s right behind us.”
“Take everyone who’s trained.”
Others started calling in over the radio, but Hannah and Rose had already bolted out the door to rouse the rest of our firefighters. Josh’s and my gear was in the mudroom and he was right beside me slamming into his boots and jacket. It wasn’t as bitter cold as it had been last week and had rained earlier in the day, but we still needed our sweats beneath the rubber suit. We’d practiced this drill a dozen times and Carl, Doug, and Larry were headed out their doors to meet us as we ran for my car. I reached under the seat, grabbed the emergency light and set the blue strobe on my roof. We were out the drive within five minutes of when I first heard the squawk. Josh tuned the emergency radio in the car and reported our approach.
“Ranch, you have responsibility for setting up a perimeter and keeping people back so the trucks can get in. Make sure nothing is parked in the path and direct people away from the house. Trucks are ETA ten minutes.”
“Roger that, dispatch. We are pulling in, now,” Josh said. There were already a couple neighbors there. This was the section with twenty homes Maribelle’s parents had subdivided but the homes weren’t close enough to pose a real threat to each other. Josh and Doug made sure the roads were clear. Carl, Larry, and I ran to the nearest neighbor to get the details.
“They aren’t home,” one guy said. “We tried to get a hose on it, but it was too hot next to the faucet. Must have started in the basement. Where’s your truck?”
“Five minutes away,” I said. I glanced toward the barn. “Is there water in the barn? We’ll need to get water from somewhere.”
“I know they’ve got a tank, but I’ve never been over here before,” the guy said. I saw a couple more people trotting up. One was miffed that he couldn’t drive in. I could hear the sirens in the distance and would be glad when the trucks got here and we could do something other than watch the damned house burn like the rest of the neighbors. Another car came tearing up the road and didn’t even slow down for Josh and Doug.
“My house! Call the fire department!” the guy yelled as he got out of his car.
“Sir, we need you to clear your vehicle from the drive so the trucks can get in. They are coming right behind you.”
“But that’s my house! You’re letting everything burn.” I saw Carl looking in the door of the car. It was still running. A woman was standing next to it on the passenger side, just looking blank as flames broke out a window. The front of the house was being lit from inside by the flames in the back. Carl slipped into the car and backed it out of the driveway and out of the way. There was a boom and I saw the roof of the barn explode. It must be full of hay.
“Becky! My horse!” the woman yelled. I started running toward the barn and Larry was right beside me. We could hear the horse in the barn. I heard the sirens pulling in the drive, but we didn’t have time to look back. Their barn was a mess. It was a single aisle with three stalls on one side and equipment on the other. There wasn’t a clear path from the front door to the horse stall and we could only hope there was a path to the pasture door.
“Clear a path!” Larry yelled at me. The poor horse was frantic and banging against the stall. Larry grabbed a blanket and opened the stall. I couldn’t watch what he was doing because there was a golf cart in front of the pasture door. I gave it a shove and opened the door. A shower of sparks fell from the loft. I turned to look for Larry. Nothing. I ran back.
“Idiots!” Larry fumed. “They tied her in her stall!” The horse had been bucking and backing away enough to tighten the knot. Well, we’d have to go without a lead rope. I grabbed the halter on one side and Larry wrapped the blanket around the horse’s eyes. He released the lead and we headed for the back door. The timbers above us were glowing, but we made it outside with the horse dancing between the two of us.
We were no more than out than we were hit with a shower from the pumper. That didn’t help settle the horse, but it did put out the sparks that we’d collected on the blanket. The house and barn were too close to each other for us to go through between them, so Larry and I were essentially out of the fight. Not that there was much of a fight. We only had water for one blaze and couldn’t fight either of them effectively.
It was midnight before we got back home and we stunk of smoke. The house had been a total loss. And the barn. We really needed a firehouse that was closer. If there was something besides each home’s individual well, we could have run more than the one hose from our pumper. It was too late by the time the trucks got there, though. They were just too far away for volunteers to get to the firehouse, suit up, and get the trucks to a fire that was seven country miles away. It was the same with the tornado sirens. They were too far away.
I’d driven back to the house earlier and picked up the horse trailer. Larry loaded the lady’s horse. She was all panicked about where we were taking the horse. Larry explained that she’d be over at the ranch and the woman could make whatever arrangements she wanted to in the morning.
“I’ll never be able to afford to board her. Especially now with no home. We were so close to having the life we wanted.”
“Don’t worry about board for the next couple of months until you know what you have to work with,” I said. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get your tack out of the barn. It was kind of blocked. But we have space and plenty of hay for the rest of winter. Even a saddle if you want to ride. Come visit her whenever you want. Okay?”
“You’d do that? Just keep her for me?”
“That’s what neighbors are for,” I said.
So now there’s a new paint in our pasture.
Larry kept her separate for the night, but it didn’t look like there’d be any problems with the other horses. They were eating from opposite sides of the haymow when we went in.
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