There were several times when I have been inside buildings and had the roof fall in, or the floor fall away where you fall down into the basement. You have no idea how to get out because of the smoke, the heat, and the damage caused by the collapse. 

One of the worst times where that happened was a tuna boat fire. At the tuna boat fire, everything was metal so it gets super hot. You go in, and everything you touch is superheated. It’s like playing with pans on a stove. There are a lot of catwalks, which are these narrow passageways where you had to crawl. You had to go in with a rope tied to you so that you could find your way out, which was a very slow thing. If you fell off that catwalk, you could fall a couple of stories before you hit bottom and you wouldn’t get out. When you got into some of the areas like the holding tanks or the engine room, you didn’t know where you were because of the smoke. I was really scared on that one

Plus when you put water in a boat, you have to get the water back out. We had crews opening up different doors and hatches. They would drop down what we called ducters, which are supposed to set up a venturi action and draw water out. Some of them didn’t work too well depending on how high the water had to get drafted.

When you ran out of air at a fire like that, you were in deep trouble if you weren’t near an area that you could get out of a door and into fresh air quickly. That was a scary fire because you had to crawl around so much.