Volunteer firefighter and photographer AMOS CHAPPLE describes his first callout to a house fire.
Standing under this tall house perched on a hill, flames howling through its empty windows, it crosses my mind that if the building were to topple, I'd be dead.
Soldiers new to combat have talked about feeling an
awareness of their body's vulnerability - of tensing, never knowing when or where a bullet might strike. They have my sympathies - I'm just as tense, but there is no point wincing. If the house collapses there's nothing I can do.
Just 15 minutes earlier - at 10.57pm one recent Saturday message pagers had been beeping urgently in 12 separate Devonport addresses. Four of us make it to the station, a full crew of volunteer firefighters.
The vast majority of these callouts are false alarms.
Private fire alarms in businesses go off constantly - the pager signals them as PFAs - but they are almost always malfunctions.
Tonight, however, there is no ambiguity. "House on fire, Tudor Lane." It is real. As we drive the fire lights up the overcast sky.
I have been a volunteer firefighter since 2001 and recently finished the infamous "BA" course, breathing apparatus training, with instructors constantly telling us to stay low before eventually shooting flames over our heads from an LPG gas canister to get the message across. This is my first callout to a structure fire. I will be going in with that same BA.
As the second fire truck at the scene our crew is split into two groups. I follow Station Officer Andrew Curham to where three professional firemen are preparing to enter through the front door.
I had long wondered what that step from being outside, where air is breathable and all is well, to being inside a house fire would be like. Yet the entire period between putting on my face mask and being at the seat of the fire on the second storey is lost to my memory. When finally the moment comes I am a blind automaton, head down, bowling on through, tugging at the rubber hose in my hands.
On the second floor we head into a room completely ablaze.
Fire on this scale is a completely different thing to anything I'm used to. Flames whip out of the top of a doorway so fast it makes the air thud and pulse like some hellish squall.
Inside the room (stay low) the water from our hose is vaporised and steam whirls around us. Visibility is lost completely. My visor becomes a featureless orange screen and the door we came through, not two steps away, has disappeared.
Disorienting, loud and hot. Fire is everything they say it is.
Is is also unpredictable in subtle ways. Floors, banisters and ceilings - those things we never doubt - have to be second-guessed. When I reach out to rest on a handrail, the whole charcoal ghost moves with me.
Fire transforms: the whole top storey of the house is seriously damaged but the destruction differs from room to room.
In two there is nothing recognisable. In another, a pile of yachting jackets has been reduced to a mound of gummy, black plastic, a melted lightbulb droops like primary school glue, a neatly folded pile of black bath towels reveals dazzling white cotton when a corner is lifted.
It was the stark sameness of fire's aftermath that was eerie, everything black and in some way broken down.
The five pairs of shoes left in a neat line in the doorway were not an indicator of tragedy, but it was hard not to think, after coming face to face with fire, what would become of a person, lost and panicked, who didn't make it out.
In an upstairs bedroom the words on a charred poster, dominant above a blistered bed, can just be made out.
"There is something about the blackness of an All Black jersey that sends a shudder through your heart."
Volunteer firefighters
* 8000 volunteer firefighters in urban areas.
* 3000 volunteer rural firefighters
* 1690 full time career firefighters
* time spent on call-outs ranges from 30 minutes to five hours in major emergencies.
* recruits undergo a medical test, a police security check, and interview and selection process with the chief fire officer and brigade they will work under.
* the fire service also takes on volunteers for administration, fire safety promotional work, media work, catering and equipment maintenance.
* to become a volunteer contact the local fire station or call 0508 865 868
Volunteer firefighter and photographer AMOS CHAPPLE describes his first callout to a house fire.
Standing under this tall house perched on a hill, flames howling through its empty windows, it crosses my mind that if the building were to topple, I'd be dead.
Soldiers new to combat have talked about feeling an
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