Deadly blaze fuels firefighter to get healthy

A near-death experience inspired firefighter Rip Esselstyn to create "The Engine 2 Diet," a groundbreaking plan to help people lose weight and lower cholesterol in just four weeks. When Esselstyn learned that some of his fellow Engine 2 firefighters in Austin, Texas, were in dire physical condition, he sprang into action and created a lifesaving plan for the firehouse. Everyone who followed his plan lost weight and lowered their cholesterol. An excerpt.

Chapter one
The evening of January 5, 2000, was bitterly cold, a night no one in the Austin, Texas, Fire Department will soon forget. At the time I was working at Central Station, the city’s largest. Central was called “The Animal House” because we firefighters were notorious for our bizarre antics, from launching water balloons at passersby from the second-story rooftop to breaking rookies down until they burst into tears. There were no barriers and no boundaries.

The weather was bad when we went to bed in the firehouse dorm that night, but by early morning it was worse: A freezing rain was falling, and temperatures were heading toward record lows. Then, at 4:20 a.m., a heavy box alarm sounded. (The word “box” refers to a home; a regular box alarm signals that a single-family house is on fire, but when a heavy box alarm sounds, it means a fire at a larger building, such as an apartment complex.)

Just as at the start of an athletic competition, all my senses went into overdrive — my heart rate jumped, my stomach churned, my mind raced. Normally I’d leap right out of bed, jump into my bunker pants, and pull up my suspenders, but because I was going to be driving this shift, I had only enough time to stumble into my station pants and cotton shirt before sliding down the eighteen-foot brass fire pole.

I was also preparing for the worst. The real burners generally occur between midnight and 6 a.m., when people have gone to sleep but a stovetop is left burning, an electrical wire shorts out, or a smoldering cigarette butt ignites.

The fire turned out to be at the Lake Shore Apartments, two-and-a-half miles from the station. Sirens blaring, we pulled up to the scene, the third engine in. (Each arriving engine has a specific duty. The first engine attacks the fire, the second backs up the first, and the third hooks up to a hydrant to bring an unlimited supply of water to the first.)

Just as we were arriving, we heard a radio message from Engine 22, announcing that they had put out the fire. For a moment we relaxed, and from where we stood, looking up at the building’s second-floor balcony, the problem seemed to be nothing more than a little hibachi fire.

Then my good friend, fellow Engine 1 firefighter Josh Miller, said, “Rip, put your bunker gear on.” I didn’t understand why he’d told me that, because things seemed to be under control. Perhaps he’d had a premonition — all firefighters have them — so I listened, scuttled around to the driver’s side compartment, and donned my full gear.

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Sure enough, moments later that little fire exploded into enormous flames — larger than I had ever seen. They climbed up the side of the building, curled onto its top, and engulfed the roof.

Scared and nervous, I approached the fire, my pulse pounding. The next few minutes were a blur; time warps under severe pressure. I remember that a firefighter named Alphonso Dellert, known as Ax, stepped in front of me, and as he did, I heard the kind of bloodcurdling screams you hear only in movies: “Help me, I’m burning up!” I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly, but then the cry came again: “Help me, I’m burning!”

I sensed this scream was coming from the apartment with the balcony — but how could someone still be alive inside that inferno? The flames were rising even higher and their radiant heat was overwhelming, even from two hundred feet away.

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Ax and I were the only ones who heard the screams. Ax sprang into action. He put on his face piece, went on air (we all carry bottles supplying forty-five minutes of air so we can breathe during the worst fires), grabbed a rack line (a preconnected two-hundred-foot hose), and scrambled up a ladder. Right behind Ax, I also went on air, then steadied the ladder for him, although he was too preoccupied to realize I was watching his every move.

Ax reached the window’s edge, opened the hose, and sprayed torrents of water into the left side of the apartment, the heart of the flames. Then he hung the hose’s nozzle on the ladder’s top rung and entered the window, disappearing into the inferno.

All I could think was: I have to protect him. So I climbed the ladder and looked in the window. It felt as if I were peering at a secret passage into Hell.

A friend of mine once served as the medical director at Yosemite National Park, where, a few years ago, a lunatic had beheaded several women. My friend went out to locate the victims, but all he found was one headless body. At that point his reality changed; he’d come to believe in true evil. That’s how I felt then, seeing the fiery monster raging, laughing at us: “I’m loving this, and you guys are screwed.”

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