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.
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
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
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