The Risks

July 30, 2023

“They want to end the Student Firefighter program?”

“I’m afraid so,” Tomoko told the other six girls as they all met up at a local cafè during lunch time. Her sister, who asked the question, seemed the most hurt by what was going on. “The Student Council has already sent the principal a letter condemning such a proposal and urging him to reconsider.”

Ayumi, who had shoulder-length brown hair and light blue eyes, replied to Tomoko, “I knew our program didn’t always get along with some laws, but I thought the prefecture gave us the go-ahead to continue a long time ago.”

“They did,” said Shiori, who had returned from her piano recital that morning. “But I guess the principal doesn’t care. God, I didn’t wanna come back from Tokyo to this bullshit, but here I am.”

Sumire was also rather saddened by the news, partially covering the scars on the right side of her face out of self-consciousness. “This hurts. I owe my life to firefighters, and to hear that they won’t let us stay is horrible.”

“To be clear,” Tomoko assured her. “If they go ahead with this, they’ll let you and Rumiko stay, but no one else can join.”

“Still,” Rumiko added. “I don’t want the door being shut behind us.”

“I can only imagine how the chief will feel when he heard about this,” then said Naoko Amano, the other second-year student among the student firefighters, as she brushed back her shoulder-length brown hair and then tied it in a ponytail behind her head. “He’ll be pissed.”

“You’re damn right he will be,” then replied Yui, agreeing with her sentiment. “Has he gotten word of it?”

“I’m sure he has by now,” Tomoko theorized. “But he hasn’t told anyone yet.”

“For God’s sake,” Yui said as she slapped the table in frustration. “Why did he bring this shit up now?”

“He has the audacity to also use the deaths of one of our own as a reason, too,” Tomoko pointed out. “That pissed me off the most.”

“Screw him and his plan,” Ayumi remarked. “Have Inami Tenko’s parents been told about this?”

“I told them this morning,” Tomoko said. “I stopped by the house to check up on them, and when I told them what he said, her father got really angry. He told me that he has our back in this fight, which I expected. Her mother wasn’t happy, either.”

“Come to think of it,” Rumiko realized. “The thirtieth anniversary of her death is coming up.”

“Yeah,” Ayumi replied, nodding before she took a sip from a bottle of water to finish it off. “In just four days.”

“And that makes this whole debacle even worse,” Tomoko pointed out with a sigh. “All the old guys can still recall the day she died like it was yesterday…”

…

August 3, 1993

A third-year of Harukawa Girls Academy ran into the fire station along with three other girls right behind her. As they did, several other firefighters, including a younger Daisuke Miyagi and Hiro Okubo, were rapidly getting dressed in their turnout gear. As the third-year, who had her black hair tied back in a bun, ran to her gear, she thought to herself, “We need to hurry. There’s still people in there!”

As she kicked her shoes off, the siren for the fire brigade roared to life once again, an indication that it was a working structure fire. She then slipped her boots on and pulled them all the way up to her upper thigh before putting her coat on and grabbing her helmet. While she did this, Hiro, who had joined the brigade upon graduating high school a year prior, turned to her and told her, “Ready for the big one, Tenko?”

“You bet,” she replied as the two of them raced to an older version of Engine 31 and hopped in the back, taking the last two seats and quickly putting air packs on. “They got the Americans going from the naval base too. It must be bad.”

Then, a younger version of the chief, Taichi Mikazuki, hopped up front. At the time, he was the captain of the brigade, and was one of the first to show up to the station when the call came in. “Are you guys ready?”

“Yep,” replied Tenko as she tightened her straps down and then checked the mask attached to her air pack. As Engine 31 left the station, she turned to Hiro and gave him a kiss on the cheek, somewhat surprising him. “I’ll see you in there.”

Hiro chuckled before Taichi told the crew in the back, “When we get there, we’re going right in! The paid crew is already on scene stretching a line, but they need a second line going and two guys to go in and search! They still need to find the owner of the ramen shop! Okubo, Inami, you guys go in and search! I’ll take care of the second line!”

“Got it,” Tenko replied before she took her helmet off and began to put her mask on early, with Hiro doing the same. When the two put their helmets back on, Engine 31 came to a stop, and the two jumped out and immediately ran to the side of the rig to grab hand tools, with Tenko grabbing an axe and a halligan bar combined to form a set of irons, which was wrapped together in a sling, while Hiro grabbed a water extinguisher and a tobiguchi, a short hook traditionally used in Japanese firefighting, with both also grabbing portable radios. As they briskly walked up to the shop, they found heavy smoke pushing out of the first floor and second floor. “Holy shit,” Tenko remarked as they marched up to the scene.

When they got to the shop, they found that one hose line was already stretched into the building and that two paid firefighters had already come out carrying a woman from the burning building as a crowd watched from the sidewalk. The chief of the volunteers told the two of them as he walked up to them, “Follow the line and then take the stairs to the second floor! They think he’s up there!”

Hiro told Tenko, “Follow the line! We’ll go in together!” The two then set their tools down to hook the tubes of their masks to their air pack regulators, allowing them to breathe pack air, before picking them up and heading into the thick dark smoke, which immediately reduced their visibility to almost zero. They carefully searched as much of the first floor as they could while staying close to the hand line stretched by the paid crew. As they did, they could hear the rest of Engine 31’s crew pulling a second hose line into the building from behind them.

Eventually, after about two minutes of searching and transitioning away from searching from the hose line to searching from the wall, they found the stairs to the second floor. Tenko said to Hiro, “Hang on! It’s blocked by some debris!” She then tossed several chairs and a small table that had been knocked over and were blocking the foot of the stairs. “Alright. Let’s go!” She quickly but thoroughly sounded each stair as she went up with her halligan bar, not wanting to fall through.

When they got to the top of the stairs, the smoke was even thicker than before, and the heat was even more intense, especially as they began to crawl down the hallway. “The fire must be close ahead,” said Hiro as Tenko found a door. “Are we going in there?”

“Yep!” Tenko then tried the door, but found it to be locked, so in response, she took apart the set of irons and slammed the flat head of the axe she had into the door several times, forcing it open after the fourth swing. She then put the axe back together with the halligan bar and entered the room, yelling, “Anyone here?! Call out if you can hear us!”

Both she and Hiro rapidly searched the room, but found no luck, finding it to be a small storage room with cabinets to hold files and a safe to store money, and backed out after just half a minute. “Damn it,” Hiro said. “He’s not there!”

“Let’s go down further,” she then told him as they crawled to the next room. As they did, they both could see the red glow of the fire ahead, prompting Tenko to tell Hiro, “Hit the fire with the water can! I’m gonna get this door open!”

“Got it,” Hiro replied as he pulled the pin on his water extinguisher and began to spray the fire ahead of him, forcing it back significantly with very little water.

Meanwhile, Tenko opened the door to the room with a single turn of the handle and began to search the room by herself. “Can anyone hear me?! This is the fire department! Call out if you can hear me!” As Tenko searched the room, she found that it was a small bedroom, and when she reached out with the halligan tool next to a bed, she hit something soft and immediately got closer to see what it was. When she saw that it was in fact a person, she yelled out, “Hiro! Hiro! In here! I found someone!”

Hiro quickly crawled in upon hearing Tenko call out to him. “What is it, Tenko?!”

“I got him!” Tenko then grabbed the legs of the body and began to pull as hard as she could, dragging his unconscious body out from between the bed and the wall. She then radioed out, “Engine 31, Firefighter Inami to Battalion 1 with an urgent message!”

The paid chief, who had taken command from Chief 30-Alpha upon his arrival, radioed back, “Go ahead.”

“Myself and Firefighter Okubo found someone on the second floor in a bedroom! We got a window to the outside, but we need a ladder going to it to get him out! It’s getting hot up here!” As she said this, she could feel the heat rising, a sign that they all had to get out soon.

“Received! We’ll get a ladder there now!”

Tenko told Hiro, “Help me drag this guy! It’s getting fucking hot up here!” Hiro then helped Tenko drag him to the window of the bedroom, and just as they did, several firefighters outside raised a ladder to it.

Meanwhile, Taichi was leading a hose line on the second floor with two other firefighters, and they were beginning to battle back the fire, which was growing in intensity. As he slowly made his way down the hallway, he saw the open door and told his crew, “The victim’s in there! Focus on keeping the fire away from that room!”

Back in the bedroom, Tenko smashed the window to the outside and looked outside, waving at the firefighters below and telling them, “Get up here! We’re taking him out now!”

As a firefighter raced up the ladder, Tenko and Hiro lifted the old man up as best as they could before they handed him off to the firefighter on the ladder, with Hiro remarking out of exhaustion, “Holy shit…” Just as the firefighter on the ladder began to come down, however, everything changed.

Both Tenko and Hiro began to feel the heat in the room rapidly rise, prompting Tenko to yell at Hiro, “Go! Go now!”

“You go fir-!””

Tenko insisted, “Shut up and get out already! I’ll be fine, Hiro!” She then hugged him briefly to comfort him before then pushing him towards the window, again yelling, “Get the Hell out of here before it flashes over!”

In the hallway, Taichi yelled to his crew, “Back out! Back out! It’s gonna flash!” All of them began to quickly evacuate the second floor, all the while still flowing water onto the fire.

As Hiro jumped onto the ladder, the room began to erupt in flames as the heat quickly became unbearable. Tenko grabbed her radio mic and yelled as quickly as she could, “MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!” She could get nothing else out before the fire reached her, causing her to let out a scream that shook everyone who could hear it from the outside and on the second floor to their core as she felt the worst pain in her entire life.

Taichi and his crew immediately were forced to lay down on the floor and spray water from their nozzle upwards at the fire as they were about to go down the stairs. The flashover was so intense it caused Taichi to actually trip and fall down the stairs, bumping his head several times and getting knocked unconscious by the sudden stop at the end when his helmet-covered head impacted the leg of a metal chair. The firefighter backing up the other on the nozzle, who was a student firefighter like Tenko, yelled in shock, “Captain Mikazuki!”

Tenko, burning alive, attempted to reach the ladder, but was unable to get her body out of the building in time before she went limp. She was still screaming in pain from her burns as a hose line was directed at her from the outside to put the fire that engulfed her body out. Every part of her turn out gear had completely failed by now due to the heat, and as she hung from the windowsill, Hiro cried out in horror, “TENKO! TENKO!” He quickly climbed up the ladder and grabbed a hold of her, ignoring how hot the fire had burned on her, and pulled her out as a second ladder was raised next to him and a paid firefighter dressed in orange turnout gear, symbolizing he was from a heavy rescue unit, climbed up it to join him. The two then quickly lowered Tenko down to the ground.

As Hiro stood back, tears flowing down his face from seeing what had happened to his girlfriend, other firefighters rushed over to help in any way they could. Tenko’s helmet, mask, air pack, coat, and boots were all ripped off of her, revealing that her clothes beneath her turnout gear were also charred. Her skin was badly burned, a mix of red and black charring from how intense the fire had gotten. Where her mask was on her face, a ring of damaged skin and blood from the seal on her mask fusing with her head was present. At the same time, other firefighters dragged the unconscious Taichi out and began to work on him as well, although priority was given to Tenko due to how severe her burns were.

Two American firefighters from the naval base rushed in with medical equipment, one of them asking a volunteer in accented Japanese, “What’s his status? What happened?”

“It’s a girl,” he replied. “She got burned really bad in a flashover.”

The other American turned to the first one and muttered in English, “Oh shit, don’t tell me it’s one of those kids they got.” The two then opened up their medical kit and began placing burn dressings on Tenko’s body and also pulled out an intubation kit.

A Japanese firefighter-paramedic saw that they were pulling said kit out and turned to them, ordering in English, “No, no, no! Stop!”

The American who could speak Japanese replied to him, “Wait, what’s going on?”

“We need permission to intubate her,” said the paramedic back in Japanese. “One of my guys is on the radio with a doctor right now trying to get permission to intubate her and give her morphine.”

“Permission? You need permission to do that?!”

“Yes!”

“Damn it,” he then said to his partner in English. “They need permission before we can do any ALS interventions here. She doesn’t have time.”

His partner, in disbelief, replied, “What the Hell is this?! The TV show Emergency?!”

As the residents of the village watched in a state of shock while firefighters tried to save Tenko’s life, two little girls stood by each other, holding hands as they watched the fire. “Masako-chan,” said one of the girls to the other. “What happened to that one firefighter on the ladder?”

“I think she got hurt really bad,” replied the other little girl. “I hope she’s okay, Kana-chan. She yelled a lot when she was on the ladder.”

“This is horrible,” Kana said to her friend, the two getting closer. “My daddy loved going to that ramen shop, and now it’s on fire…” The two girls were clearly distressed at seeing the fire not only destroy a locally well-known restaurant, but also hurt several people in the process of burning down.

Masako looked at the firefighters working diligently to try to save Tenko and thought to herself, “Mommy and Daddy told me they are heroes, but I never saw it until now. They definitely are heroes, aren’t they?”

…

Present Day, July 31, 2023

Hiro was at the station after another day of work doing a rig check on the ambulance. As he turned on the cardiac monitor and began to check the battery in the back of the ambulance, he heard someone behind him say, “Hello!”

He jumped slightly, startled by the voice, and turned around to find Naoko standing behind him on the apparatus bay floor. “Oh shit… You scared the Hell out of me.”

“Sorry. I just got back from swim practice after school. Me and Ayumi-chan are starting the Advanced Firefighting class tonight.”

“Ah, nice. How long is that class now?”

As Hiro turned off the cardiac monitor and put it away, Naoko explained, “Sixty hours. That combined with my Basic and SCBA Firefighting class, means I’ll have 195 hours of training by the start of October.”

“Are you gonna get your FAC-1 after that?”

“That’s the plan,” Naoko nodded. “If me and Ayumi-chan get it around the same time, we’ll have everyone who’s a student firefighter trained in it except for the first-years.”

“Now that’s a rarity,” Hiro said as he got out of the back and shut the rear door to the ambulance. “Usually we have at least one student firefighter who doesn’t want to get their SCBA cert or their FAC-1 cert. the fact that all seven of you either have or are about to get it is impressive.”

“It’s all thanks to Tomoko-san,” she replied with a smile. “She really pushed all of us to get our classes done, and with all the bullshit going on between the principal and here, she may push harder.”

“I still can’t believe he used Tenko’s name like that,” he replied in a tone of voice that made his contempt for the proposal clear. “Pardon my language, but he’s a fucking asshole. You guys aren’t undertrained at all. You go through the same exact training we do.”

“I know, right?”

Ayumu then walked over, telling Naoko, “I’m ready to head out.”

“I gotta go,” Naoko said to Hiro. “I’ll see you later.”

“Good luck and have fun at class,” Hiro replied with a wave as Naoko and Ayumi then left the firehouse. He then sighed and looked up at a framed photograph of Tenko mounted on the wall. The picture showed Tenko in full gear, minus her helmet and mask, and smiling at the camera after completing a live burn training session a few months before her death. Her hair was a bit frazzled and she had a bit of sweat on her forehead, but she appeared to be in high spirits. He gave her a faint smile and told her, “We won’t let this happen, Tenko.”

A small sign below the photograph read out in Japanese, ‘The flower that withers too young leaves behind its beauty.’ Meanwhile, next to the photograph was another sign, this time in English, that read, ‘Let no man’s ghost return to say his training let him down.’ Finally, the last sign, located on the other side of the photograph, was a short prayer in English that came from the United States and had been given to the brigade by a US Navy firefighter.

When I am called to duty, God,
whenever flames may rage,
give me the strength to save some life
whatever be its age.
Help me to embrace a little child
before it’s too late,
or some older person
from the horror of that fate.
Enable me to be alert
and hear the weakest shout,
and quickly and efficiently
to put the fire out.
I want to fill my calling
and give the best in me,
to guard my neighbor
and protect his property.
And if according to my fate
I am to lose my life,
please bless with your protecting hand
my children and my wife.