Fire Call!

Sounding the Alarm to Save Our Vanishing Volunteers

Buy the Book: Amazon
Published by: Jump Seat Press
Release Date: January 15, 2015
Pages: 318
ISBN13: 978-0990923619

 
Overview

Fire Call! takes you deep inside the little-known world of volunteer firefighters.

It’s a weird world, a dangerous world. A world where seemingly normal people drop whatever they’re doing at a moment’s notice to risk their lives to help total strangers. Follow award-winning journalist and retired fire chief George DeVault into a burning building. Dispatcher says a woman’s trapped inside.

Onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Flaming tractor-trailers are loaded with explosive cargoes. Into an ice cold pond during a hurricane. A man’s trapped in a drain pipe, fighting for his life. Two airplanes collide over a shopping mall. Then there are burning houses. The floor is burning out from under you in one. In another, the man who set the fire is still inside — with a gun.

Those are just a few of the more than 5,000 fire calls DeVault answered in his 30-plus years on the hose.

Your purchase benefits volunteer firefighters.

 

Praise

First place category winner, Chanticleer JOURNEY Award

“Reads like a fast-paced action novel.”
— Gene Logsdon, author of The Contrary Farmer

“Riveting. I can’t get enough of (the fire calls).”
— Joe Kita, Men’s Health contributor, author of Accidental Courage: Finding Out I’m a Bit Brave After All

“A terrific read. Full of exciting stories. Gut-wrenching.”
— Bill White, Allentown Morning Call

“Heart-pounding … heartbreaking.”
— Jim Patrico, Progressive Farmer

“Dramatic … entertaining. Reads like a novel.”
— Judge, 23rd Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards

“Readers will be thrilled … chilled. Fast-paced and thought provoking.”
— Chanticleer Book Reviews 4 Stars

Excerpt

Chapter Thirty-Three

Mystery of the Burning Bus

With red lights flashing and siren screaming, we’re responding to a report of a “bus fire” on the Turnpike. That’s all we know about the blaze at the moment, except that it’s a bad one. We can see a huge column of thick, black smoke from half a mile away. It towers over the trees lining the highway. The closer we get, the taller the black cloud looms until the smoke almost blocks out the afternoon sun. It looks like a volcano blowing its top.

Jason Tapler, the fire chief in Vera Cruz at the time, is behind the wheel of 2821, our pumper/tanker. He’s straddling the center line of the southbound lanes to make sure no one passes the fire truck. Why anyone would want to get to a fire, accident or other emergency before a fire truck “wonders me,” as the Pennsylvania Dutch here say. But it happens all of the time on the Turnpike.
In the front passenger’s seat, the officer’s seat, is Capt. Jim Kellar. He’s running the siren and the airhorn and juggling two radio microphones, trying to make sense out of what the Lehigh County Dispatcher, state police, Turnpike officials and other firefighters are saying all at the same time. None of it sounds very good.

In the jump seats behind are two firefighters, Kristin Kellar and me. Kris is Jim’s wife. They have a 9-year-old daughter, Kourtney, and run a thriving auto repair shop in Emmaus. Kris is a trim, attractive 38-year-old identical twin with shoulder-length brown hair. She likes the music of James Taylor, is a pretty fair shot with a pistol and holds a red belt in karate. Growing up, she watched “Emergency!” on TV. “It looked pretty cool,” Kris says. Then the show went off the air, and she forgot all about those dashing paramedics John Gage and Roy DeSoto until many years later, when her husband joined the local volunteer fire company.

The newest firefighter on our team, Kris is about to wear an air pack into a real fire for the very first time. She doesn’t know quite what to expect. She’s nervous, but she trusts that her training, her gear and her fellow firefighters will see her safely through whatever dangers lie ahead.

I share that trust. I’ve fought many fires with women firefighters before. Although they may not have the height and strength advantage of many men, the other female firefighters I’ve worked with over the years — Victoria Schadler, Sara Wildman, April Lubenetski, Angela Neff, Katy Dickman, Laura Danner and Jennifer Heiserman — always seemed more level-headed than many of their male counterparts. No female firefighter I worked with ever panicked and dropped the nozzle and ran out leaving me to possibly die in a burning building.

Besides, I helped train Kris, purposely putting her through physical and mental tortures meant to break people made of lesser stuff. She didn’t even bend under pressure. After one grueling training session, Kris said, “I’d follow you anywhere.” The feeling is mutual, sister. I’ll go into a burning building with you any day.

Now, bundled from head to toe in our protective firefighting gear, Kris and I wriggle into the shoulder straps and air masks of our air packs as our truck nears the burning bus.
“What kind of bus?” I wonder. School bus? Church bus? Tour bus? Or, maybe it’s Arlo Guthrie and his red VW microbus with half a ton of garbage, shovels, rakes and implements of destruction. On the Turnpike, you never know. Sooner or later, we get 'em all.

How many passengers? Was there an accident? Is someone hurt, maybe trapped? Or did they all get out OK? Is the bus upright or tipped over? Is there a fuel spill? Are there any other vehicles involved? Where is the fire? Is it in the front or the back? We talking gasoline or diesel engine? Hybrid or propane? Where is the fuel tank?

Even more questions race through our minds as we near the scene. But we can’t talk very well through our air masks. So I just raise my right hand toward Kris, stick the thumb of my thick leather glove high in the air and give it an emphatic shake. Thumbs up! One gesture says it all: I’m good to go! You? I also smile, even though the nose cup inside my air mask completely hides my mouth. All we can see is each other’s eyes. Our eyes lock. Kris flashes me a thumbs up in return. Good, because in a few seconds all of our questions about the fire — and ourselves — will be answered.
Rounding the last curve, we finally see the fire …