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There is a friendly rivalry between police departments and fire departments. It has to do with the ease with which the fire departments can come up with additional funding. That and the fact that they get to sleep while on duty. Everybody loves firemen. They are the good guys. When they need money they ask for it, most of the time a new fire district tax gets passed and they get it.

For the police department, it's not so easy. Oh, we're good guys too-when you're in trouble and need help. But in the back of everyone's mind is the time they got a traffic ticket. When we need money we ask for it. Usually what we hear is something like, "Why don't you just write some more tickets? Get it that way."

That's the rivalry part of it, but usually we get along very well indeed. We work in harmony at fires and ambulance calls. I will never have a bad word to say about the paramedics. Those guys are great. Still, sometimes we don't understand the disparities in our work.

A few years ago I heard a call come out for an apartment fire. I was patrolling within 100 yards of the apartment building when I heard it. I turned into the parking lot and immediately saw it was an active fire. It was in one of the middle apartments on the second floor of the building. There was only one entrance from an exterior walkway going from one side of the building front to the other.

I ran up the steps to the walkway and began working my way toward the fire, pounding on the door of each apartment to make sure everyone was out. Suddenly a woman in the parking lot started pointing at the burning apartment and screaming, "There's a baby in there! There's a baby in there!"

There wasn't a fire truck close enough that I could even hear a siren. There was no time to waste, so I kicked the door open. As it swung in, black smoke billowed out. The visibility into the room was zip. I knew I wouldn't be able to breathe that stuff so I took a couple of deep breaths, held it, and dropped to the floor and started crawling in.

The interior of the room was warm, but it wasn't hot. I couldn't feel direct heat from the fire source. The smoke stung my eyes, making them water but it was tolerable. The visibility was still zero. I felt and crept my way across the floor until I came to a couch. By the time I had run my hands over it to make sure no one was on it, I had run out of air. I had made it about 12 feet into the apartment.

I barely made it back out the door before I had to take a breath. The air on the walkway seemed

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