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WORDS OF FIREFIGHTERS -  33

My husband, brother, and a few uncles are fire fighters. So to see me on the sidelines watching the dancing flames is not so surprising. My husband is no longer able to fire fight. Sometimes we will sit and share some of his times and experiences.

When we bought our first home, it caught fire while we where away, we had not even fully moved in. I had smelled something strange but did not think anything of it, figured my son had washed his tennis shoes again and they where cooling in the dryer, and I left for a while. A friend of ours stopped my daughter and me at a service station and told us the house was on fire but our son was out, and hubby was coming home from work,

I have never been one to panic and always made jokes when I am very stressed. When we pulled into the drive way and saw the smoke billowing out the windows the Fire Marshall came to tell me we just had a fire.. they say I looked at him straight in the eye…put my hands together and asked where the marshmallows were! He asked me if I was ok and answered him by passing out. I can only think it was shock and deepened from the death of my most cherished Aunt in a fire a few years before. They never could tell us what the cause was.

My husband will always be a fire fighter in heart now that he is unable to physically do so.

Kurt Kamm writes novels about fires and firefighters. A resident of Malibu , he has lived through several wildland fires. He is a regular visitor at the fire camps, stations and training academies of L.A. County Fire Department and CalFire. To learn more about his novels, One Foot in the Black, and Red Flag Warning, visit http://www.kurtkamm.com.