The Maze and Maintaining the Faith

Friends and others who have read my posts and comments know that I use militant imagery from my own experience to bolster my expressed opinions. Sometimes I wonder if efforts come off as if I'm trying to employ a literary device that resonates with some and turns other people off. I promise: That isn't what I'm doing.

I remember the first time I was put through our fire department's brand new mask confidence course, aka the Maze. You get suited up in your turnout gear, put a plastic insert into your mask to completely obscure your vision, clip into your air tank (40 mins of air at rest, and 25-17 under stress), you get down on all fours and crawl into this narrow tunnel. After navigating through various obstacles, blind and constantly orienting and reorienting yourself, you come to the final stretch - the end of the course. You intuit that you're near the end because you can hear your buddies and the training officer chatting away as they wait for you to emerge.

Anyway, the first time I went through the current version of our Maze, I hit a rough spot near the end. I realized I must be close, but how close? I do not exaggerate when I say that I did not know and that everything seemed to go in slow motion! I also knew that my air was running out and, sure enough, the low air alarm went off!

I can't adequately describe what it's like to hear that alarm progressively go from a chirp to a slow and steady <ding! ding! ding!> to a <grrrrrrr!> and finally to an almost violent vibration of the mask against your face! As harrowing as that vibration is, once it stops, you're SOL. The mask sucks to your face and you have to decide whether to detach the regulator and breathe super heated gases that will kill you OR keep the mask on and suffocate.

A training exercise? Yes. An exercise during which both recruits and seasoned veterans occasionally die. In the past decade, I have served on the honor guard for two men who died this way in the line of duty. An exercise that you take seriously because however you habituate yourself to behave in training is how you'll behave at the real thing.

Long story short, in the home stretch of the Maze the first time I went through it, the mask was ready to suck to my face and the TO was screaming, "DON'T YOU DARE TAKE THAT F-N THING OFF!" DON'T YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! MOVE!" When it was all over and I was successfully out of the mask confidence course, the TO debriefed me and it was then that I realized that, at the time the temptation to panick was greatest, I was only fifty feet from the end.

Please, brethren. Stay among your own. Communicate, communicate, communicate! Create and maintain resources to help one another through this time! We know what the enemy is all about; don't waste precious air on him. Just move!