Burning Down the House - Russell Wangersky

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      Russell Wangersky is a writer whose first collection of short stories, The Hour of Bad Decisions, was nominated for numerous awards including, most notably, the longlist for the 2006 Giller Prize and the shortlist for the 2006 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. The editor of The Telegram in St. John’s, Newfoundland, his columns and editorials have appeared in newspapers across Canada.

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       Burning Down the House

      ALSO BY RUSSELL WANGERSKY

       The Hour of Bad Decisions

      BURNING

      DOWN

      THE

      HOUSE

       Fighting Fires and Losing Myself

       RUSSELLWANGERSKY

      Thomas Allen Publishers

      Toronto

      Copyright © 2008 by Russell Wangersky

      First paperback edition copyright © 2009 by Russell Wangersky

      All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems—without the prior written permission of the publisher, or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.

       Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Wangersky, Russell, 1962–

      Burning down the house : fighting fires and losing myself / Russell Wangersky.

      ISBN 0-88762-329-8.

      ISBN 978-0-88762-329-5 (bound). ISBN 978-0-88762-410-0 (pbk.)

      1.Wangersky, Russell, 1962–. 2. Volunteer fire fighters—Canada—Biography.

      3. First responders—Canada—Biography. 4. First responders—Psychology.

      5. First responders—Job stress. I. Title.

      TH9118.W35A3 2008 363.37092 C2007-907557-6

      Editor: Janice Zawerbny

      Cover and text design: Gordon Robertson

      Cover images: Veer

      I have drawn extensively on two pieces of previously published material for this book: an essay of mine titled “Heroes” that was published in Ian Brown’s What I Meant to Say, and “Mechanics of Injury,” which was published in PRISM international. Neither is included in its entirety here, but readers of either will recognize some of the situations involved. Astute readers may recognize details from two other pieces, “House of Dreams” and “Ways of Seeing,” which were also printed in PRISM international.

      Published by Thomas Allen Publishers,

      a division of Thomas Allen & Son Limited,

      145 Front Street East, Suite 209,

      Toronto, Ontario M5A 1E3 Canada

       www.thomas-allen.com

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      The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of

      The Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program.

      We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which

      last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

      We acknowledge the Government of Ontario through the

      Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative.

      We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book

      Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

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      Printed and bound in Canada

      CONTENTS

       SEVEN

       EIGHT

       NINE

       TEN

       ELEVEN

       TWELVE

       THIRTEEN

       FOURTEEN

       FIFTEEN

       SIXTEEN

       SEVENTEEN

       EIGHTEEN

       NINETEEN

       TWENTY

       TWENTY-ONE

       TWENTY-TWO

       TWENTY-THREE

       TWENTY-FOUR

       TWENTY-FIVE

       TWENTY-SIX

       TWENTY-SEVEN

       TWENTY-EIGHT

       TWENTY-NINE

       THIRTY

       EPILOGUE

       ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I have seen people in their most unguarded moments—where their family members have died, at accident scenes where the breadth of the destruction has already started to sink in but no one has any idea how long that destruction will last, and at fires where families have seen their homes and memories destroyed. I don’t mean to trade on that, at least not by describing private individuals in anything close to identifiable detail. In fact, in some cases I have intentionally made it difficult to identify people, although I have stayed away from establishing composite or fictionalized characters: what happened is true, you just may not be able to find out who it actually happened to. And that’s probably for the best.

      A second thing: this book is based on the most malleable of things—memory. My own memory, in fact. I didn’t take notes during my years of firefighting because, first of all, I had not planned

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