In Cypress Creek, firefighters shoot hoops on bottled air and fly a ladder pipe over an empty lawn. None of it is for show. All of it is for the call that hasn’t come yet.
By Jim Towers, M.J.A., J.D. | Houston Heights Independent
CYPRESS, Texas — Two firefighters walked out of the bay at Cypress Creek Fire Department Station in full turnout gear: coat, pants, boots, helmet, masks sealed to their faces, air bottles riding on their backs. One of them was carrying a basketball.
It was a little after noon on a November day, warm enough that standing still in that gear is work. 90 degrees They did not stand still. They played. Layups. Rebounds. A shot that sailed over the roofline and dropped in front of the bay door. Between possessions one of them bent at the waist, hands toward his knees, in the posture of a man whose air bottle is winning.
This is an air-consumption drill. The idea is simple. An SCBA cylinder carries a rated supply of air, but that rating assumes a person breathing at a steady pace. A firefighter dragging a hoseline up a stairwell, or carrying someone down one, is not breathing at a steady pace. He is breathing the way you breathe after a full-court sprint. The only honest way to learn how long your bottle lasts is to work hard on it until it tells you.
The bottles last 30 minutes however, rookies can burn through their air in eight minutes if they don't know how to control the breathing under stress and in full gear.
The basketball is the part that makes it look like recess. It isn’t. The mask narrows your vision to a window. The coat is built to keep heat out, which means it is just as good at keeping your own heat in. Add a midday Texas sun, and every trip down the court is a small lesson in what the body costs when the air is on your back instead of in the room.
There is an older instinct in it, too, and anyone who has served will recognize it. Rangers will pull on full MOPP gear, the rubber chemical-protective suit and mask, shoulder their rucks and rifles, and go run in the heat. It builds the body. It also says something to the man beside you about what you are willing to carry. Firefighters speak the same language. On the court behind this station, they speak it fluently.
Water Over the Lawn
Across the district at Station 23, at 9909 Ladder 23 had its aerial raised over the grass, and the master stream nozzle at the tip was flowing.
For a while the nozzle threw a wide fog pattern, a white curtain that hung in the sun and drifted across the lawn. Fog is the defensive pattern. It soaks up heat and pushes back. Then the stream tightened into a solid arc that carried clear to the far side of the grass. A straight stream is the one that reaches. It goes deep into a building where fog would turn to steam halfway there.
Nobody driving past on the road would have thought twice about it. A ladder truck spraying a lawn looks like a crew killing time. It is the opposite. A ladder pipe that hasn’t flowed water since its last check is one a crew is trusting on faith, and nobody in this line of work likes trusting anything on faith.
Full Disclosure
HHI owes this department a debt, and readers should know it.
During a heavy thunderstorm Murray, HHI’s Sergeant Major and Chief Correspondent at Large, a basset hound of substantial build, got spooked, got out, and ran. This was before he wore an AirTag. We searched and could not find him.
He turned up , stuck at a neighbor’s front-door security cage. He had tried to squeeze through the bars and failed, on account of being a basset hound. The woman who lived there called the fire department. Cypress Creek firefighters got him free, scanned his microchip, and got him home.
He wears an AirTag now. He has not become any less rambunctious.
The crews out here train in the heat with a basketball and a bottle of air so they’re ready when the call is a house, a highway, or a stairwell full of smoke. Sometimes, it turns out, the call is a chubby basset hound in a burglar-bar door. They showed up for that one too.
To cypress fire, Thanks for saving our couch potato !
Houston Heights Independent. James Towers, Photojournalist HHI.
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