by Brittany Wilkerson

Created on: May 22, 2009

the not so average emergency

"Ring, ring, ring..," blares the siren as the light flashes around, enabling the sweat from the woman's face to glow red. A familiar computerized voice comes over the intercom, but all Chief Campbell hears is a simple small apartment fire, so she tunes out the rest of the call. As she was not paying attention, she missed what was soon to become the most important piece of information in that simple call, not realizing that none of the other firefighters were paying attention either. She runs to the rack at the middle far side of the station and grabs her big heavey jacket and quickly pulls on those thick, solidifying pants and snatches her helmet off the hook. As she shouts orders in the cab of Fire Engine 9, she doesn't give a trimmer of thought to asking the details of the call they were approaching. Upon arriving, a meer 7 and a half minutes later, she stands in front of the only entrance closest to the mildly blazing fifth story apartment waiting for her crew to assume their assigned postions, while in the back of her mind thinking "Just another everyday fire. No biggy. We'l just go in spray it down, clean house then I can go back to the firehouse and get some grub and take a nice long nap until the shift is over." If only she knew just how soon that nap would come.

She gives the signal and one of her fellow firefighters begins chopping at the door of the apartment. This is where her fatal mistake becomes abundantly clear to the passer-by and astonished crowd, just 5 levels below her. With the final hack of his axe, the oblivious firefighter does not realize the set-up maticulously created behind that door. His axe catches the gas line, ripping it from its place on the kerosene tank, spraying kerosene into the air just across a well lit, strategically placed match taped to the back of the door. A light hissing as the kerosene sprays over the lit match. It begins spraying out as a liquid, then quickly becomes pure gas. "BOOM!" Sparks fly, flames shoot out and miniature bombs go off, as Chief Campbell soars over the railing of the deck infront of the emblazed apartment complex. As fast as the speed of light, she manuvered from standing on two feet ready to charge a house fire, to laying on her back in the parking lot below in pain, broken-boned and shattered. And as she lie there in agonizing pain, the last thought to flutter across her mind just so happened to be, "I probably should've taken the day off."

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