Life in the Firehouse (Or, The Fantasy Island In Our Own Back Yard)

THE FIREFIGHTER leans earnestly forward and, motioning towards the others drinking coffee around the firehouse's kitchen table, says, "The first thing you've gotta learn is not to pay any attention to the bull these guys are feeding you about how sweet life is around here. I mean, this place is fucking crazy. It's a fucking fantasy island."

He goes on to say that that is all you really need to know about life in the firehouse--it is a fantasy island, with crazy guys trying to live together in a crazy firehouse, chasing after crazy fires and saving the lives of the crazy people of Cambridge. And so you begin to look for examples of the weirdness.

At first, though, it is hard to see anything out of the ordinary. The firehouse, tucked quietly in the shadow of Mem Hall, is a rather traditional looking building which blends right in with the surrounding brick of the Harvard campus. Three companies of the Cambridge Fire Department are headquartered in the house, an engine company, an aerial tower company and the department's special rescue company.

Each company consists of 20 men (there are no women in the firehouse yet)--one captain, three lieutenants, and 16 firefighters. The men are split into four groups, with one officer and four firefighters in each group, working on a rotating schedule so that each company has a group on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Each group ends up working two day shifts (7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.), taking off a day, and then working for two nights (5:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m.). A group is then off for three days before coming back for two day shifts again. It averages out to about 42 hours a week.

Between fires and false alarms the men spend long periods of time waiting in the firehouse. They keep busy by doing rather ordinary things like practicing firefighting skills, maintaining their apparatus, or doing housework--they do all of their own cooking and cleaning. They also play a lot of ping-pong (a good game for the firehouse because it is easily interrupted), watch television or just sit around the kitchen table drinking coffee and engaging in endless streams of locker-room banter.

On the surface, then, there do not seem to be a lot of crazy goings-on in the firehouse. The strangeness only becomes apparent when you begin to consider the nature of firefighting itself.

FIREFIGHTING IS a uniquely schizophrenic occupation: in few other jobs is there such an amazing combination of extremes of activity. In minutes the men can go from late-night sleep in the second-floor dormitory to life-and-death situations in a burning building. One moment there is quiet routine, and the next there are sudden surprises.

Interestingly enough, this on/off nature of the job makes firefighting very rewarding. At a fire, or when the Rescue Co. is at a medical emergency, the men are completely involved in their work. It is nothing like an office or factory job where only half of one's faculties are engaged. It is a job over which the men can get excited. Every alarm represents a potential challenge, a chance to learn something new. There is seldom any boredom or complacency, especially since the firehouse next to Mem Hall is one of the busiest in the city.

The stretches of time between alarms provide a complement to periods of intensity. Firefighting has an important social aspect. The men have to work closely together, as fighting a fire is a tactical operation requiring precise organization and teamwork. Thus the men have to learn to depend on and trust one another, and the time spent living together during their shifts in the firehouse helps to provide the camaraderie that makes this possible.

One thing is for certain, the men in the firehouse really like what they are doing. Many of them could be earning more than their current salary (over $15,000) at other jobs, but they consistently say that they are happy where they are.

In addition to liking the action of the job, they like the job security they have and their staggered work schedule, which permits many of them to attend college and earn degrees that they would otherwise not have a chance to earn.

There are seldom any moral questions about firefighting, another unique part of the job. There are never any "good" fires, only "bad" ones, and after working hard to stop a fire the men can feel very satisfied.

Of course there are drawbacks to the job. For instance, risking one's life trying to put out an obviously arson-caused fire is not a very rewarding experience.

Also, along with coal mining, firefighting is the most dangerous occupation in the country. The danger and the long night shifts tend to put a strain on home life. Although the men say that firefighters do not have an abnormally high divorce rate and that their wives support their choice of jobs, their wives do spend many long worrisome nights when their husbands are on duty.

There are other annoying aspects of the job, such as having to go out on a run just as one has sat down to eat dinner. But the men accept all of the drawbacks and most of them say that there is really nothing else they would rather do for a living.

They say that they like to come to work. They say that the Fire Department has one of the lowest rates of absenteeism of any department in the city and that they do not even have an allotted number of sick days each year like most of the other departments because they do not want them, since they only encourage workers to take days off, workers who have not missed a day of work in years. They would rather have some other benefit instead.

And so the firehouse actually is a kind of fantasy world. It is not particularly crazy, but compared to a lot of jobs in modern society it really is unique.

The author spent a month working with the Rescue Company of the Cambridge Fire Department, which is based in the firehouse at 491 Broadway next to Memorial Hall.