Editor's note: This article is the fourth in a series following recruits through the San Mateo County Fire Academy.

By Dwana Simone Bain
Staff Reporter

MENLO PARK -- Wednesday June 6, 2001: It isn't hell, but an incredible simulation.
Cement rubble covers the ground. Broken cars are piled precariously atop one another. A door, detached from its frame, lies a few feet away on the ground, along with shattered glass, broken bits of reflector. A sign on a two-story structure reads: "Welcome to Baylands Structural Collapse Training."
Near the site entrance, a memorial is erected to the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.
A fallen basketball hoop lies beneath a building. The front of the wooden building reads, "Home of the California Task Force 3."
Reminiscent of a ghost town, the buildings are namesakes of disasters past: "Northridge," earthquake, Hurricane "Iniki."
Here, recruits train with those who've responded to some of the country's worst disasters. California Task Force 3 is one of 28 National Federal Emergency Management Agency Teams, and one of two structure rescue teams in the Bay Area. The task force -- which counts several county fire agencies among its ranks -- extricates victims trapped by structural collapse.
"We thought [rescue training] was one the big needs," said Academy Co-Director Capt. Keith Roberts. "We're in earthquake territory here ... It's not if it will happen. It's when."
Seven recruits carry a "victim" on a makeshift stretcher strapped to a ladder. They've brought him down from the roof, now they'll carry him around and through obstacles, navigating through concrete tunnels scattered throughout the property.
The last obstacle is the toughest: a rectangular tunnel about 20 feet long and only about three feet wide and four feet tall. It's up to the recruit serving as incident commander to decide how to proceed. "Shorter guys first," he suggests...
Recruits are working in small teams. While one team practices navigating concrete enclosures, others work on ladder and rescue techniques from buildings. Forrest "Buddha" Dyer is strapped in a stretcher attached to a ladder. Playing the victim, "I feel very, very helpless right now," Dyer said, half smiling. "If they were to drop me, I'd be hurt."
"But," he emphasizes "I trust my team."
"He weighs 300 pounds!" exclaims San Bruno recruit Holly Nelson, pushing her classmate up the ladder.
"218," he corrects. "I dieted to get into this academy."

Fit to firefight
Dyer was a 260-pound bodybuilder, before he started running. "In this game, if you've got all muscle and no cardio, you're not going to make it," he explains. Though some credit their loss of body fat to the "good academy food," it's more likely the physical training they receive. As a group, they run every day, are timed on their miles and tested in sit-ups and pull-ups.
Because of the physical nature of the job, recruits work out in earnest. "Pretty much everyone in the academy that I know of works out on a regular basis," said Menlo Park recruit Jane O'Neil Hunt, a.k.a "Neiley," who pre-academy worked out with weights five times a week.
"The body definitely takes a lot of abuse," said recruit Steven Rohrer, also from Menlo Park. "Being physically fit is a very important part."

Jumping off a bridge
If you do a good job in the academy, you get to jump off the Dumbarton Bridge. Recruits have been looking forward to the bridge field trip. It's an adventure -- a reward for hard work -- but as with anything in the academy, it's also educational. It helps recruits practice knot and pulley techniques, and the rope systems used to rescue victims.
Recruits drive to a parking area near the bridge, then walk about a quarter mile along the shoulder, disappearing from view through a hole in the ground. They climb down the ladder and into a dark cave-like enclosure where they'll stay until it's almost time to jump.
From there, they walk hundreds of feet down a catwalk to an appropriate segment of bridge to hook their equipment.
It's a warm day, but under-the-bridge weather is windy and cold. A strong breeze pushes through the hair, eyes and nostrils, slapping the face and smacking the body through the lightweight wildfire uniforms.
Bridge jumping isn't for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. Standing 135 feet above the water for hours is tolerable. As long as you don't look down. Instructor and veteran rescuer Harold Schapelhouman, captain of special operations for the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, rappels smoothly down the bridge to demonstrate the technique.
Minutes later Schapelhouman's body is sprawled upon the cement landing below, surrounded by dark, rusty-red blood-like paint splatter, his arms facetiously flailing.
Unmoved by Schapelhouman's actions, Neiley jumps next. On her way down she flashes a quick smile for Brian Sheehan's disposable camera. "It's a beautiful day," she yells as she continues to slide.
"If anything's going to happen today, it's going to happen to Marcel [Cafferata]" his friends joke. He lost his sunglasses, his keys...
Despite the apparent jinx, Cafferata rappels down just fine. But as he reaches to grab the rope to help the next recruit, the wind captures the rope instead, constantly pushing it from his reach as he jumps.
Nelson's next. "Don't worry," her friends tease her as she straps in. "Marcel's got the rope!"
Sheehan's been looking forward to this day. He's had his share of amateur bridge-jumping experience as a kid. Now he's getting paid for it. "I love my job!" he shouts as he falls. "Oh yeah..."

Playing with fire
"Over the last eight weeks, we spent days on how to rescue people, we've had a lot of hose work and nozzle work leading up to this," said Steven Rohrer. Battling live blazes is "really an opportunity ... to kind of get in there and get a feel for it."
Thursday, June 14, 2001: The imposing tower structure at the Modesto training tower holds two fire chambers.
Upstairs, a bedroom fire rages in a hot metal chamber. In mere seconds, the flames burst from the bed to the ceiling. Teams of firefighters quickly crawl into the burning room, attacking the fire with hoses as the flames burn above their heads.
And so the practice goes for 45 minutes. "It's a real test of their physical conditioning," said Battalion Chief Bert Ramirez. The constant crawling in and out of the fire scene is hard on the recruits. Their knees bear the brunt of the pain. Recruits emerge from the two-day trip with scraped, scabbed knees.
Ramirez walks through the metal chamber, still steaming from a just-extinguished fire. "They've been cooling this down for a while, it's still hot," he said.
It gets awfully toasty in here, and humid." The temperature can reach 900 degrees at the ceiling, 500 degrees at the three-foot level. The heat's enough to melt the numbers on the fire helmets.
With no obstructions between the bed and the hose, the bedroom fire is the easier of the two.
Downstairs, teams of recruits struggle to put out a kitchen fire. The kitchen has been rigged with obstacles, blocked by furniture.
"When it gets really going in there you can't see in front of your face," explains Ramirez.
Often, the hardest fires to fight aren't the tall structure fires with the giant flames. They are the fires that burn inside, through thick black smoke, the source hard to determine. "They don't look spectacular, but you work your butt off," said Academy Co-Director Colin Sullivan.
Unfortunately, that's how many firefighters get into trouble. "You get lost, run out of air and start having to breathe that stuff, you last about 30 seconds," said Ramirez.
With the thick black smoke, "at times you couldn't even see the flames, it was just kind of a glow," said Rohrer.
He reflects back a few weeks to when he climbed the confidence course blindfolded. "When you're doing it blindfolded you're relying on teamwork," said Rohrer. It's the same teamwork that as partners, he and Neiley relied on in the fire.
Carlos Arroyo is ill today. He was told to rest in the hotel, but halfway through the day, Arroyo appears in the Modesto training lot. Despite a bad flu, "My partner, I can't let him down," Arroyo said.
Arroyo isn't the kind of guy to bail out, his fire partner Gary Stephen explains. "He'd go in sick, dead..."
Partners in a fire are like two legs. "If you only have one leg you can't walk," said Arroyo. "Right now, I'm the bum leg."
If it were a real fire, Arroyo said he'd call in sick. Otherwise, "I'd be just another victim."
Victim rescue is another element of live fire training, with more experienced firefighters playing the victim in a "firefighter down" scenario. But one group fighting a kitchen fire squirted just enough water to get the victim out, and then let the kitchen burn. "They made a mistake," said Academy Administrator Don Dornell.
"They knew they were letting it burn. They were thinking you have to get the victim out," said Dornell. While the first job is always to save a life, the person with the nozzle needs to stay and address the fire "while his partner rescues the victim."
For safety, there's a high ratio here of experienced firefighters to recruits. The rooms are also equipped with sensors, which shut the fire off if the room gets too hot.
Recruits say the protective clothing helps keep them from feeling the full impact of the flames. Also, "the heat that we experienced in there was nowhere near what we would experience in a real fire," said Rohrer, who is "anxiously awaiting" fighting his first fire for his department.
After the academy, the Menlo Park recruits attend another weeklong academy "and then we're the third person on that engine," said Rohrer.
A firefighter could be on the nozzle shortly thereafter, depending upon "how much you've been able to show that captain of how capable you are," said Rohrer. "You have to earn the right to be on the nozzle."
Until that day comes, recruits appreciate the Modesto experience. "It was so awesome and just exhausting and challenging," Neiley said.
Every activity is a challenge, Neiley added. Rescue systems training, working with hydraulic tools and chainsaws ...
"It's obviously not stuff that I do on a regular basis, it's all really interesting to me to learn. I'm really focused on this [academy] and I really enjoy it," Neiley said. "It's what I've been working for." While others work to get where they need to be, "now I feel like I reached where I need to be for the time being."