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AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Officials name senior vice president, chief of staff
By Fiona Riley, Assistant News Editor • March 26, 2024

A burning passion

Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

But last Wednesday, when senior Imran Faruqi smelled smoke, neither he nor the three fire engines that responded to the 6 a.m. call could find the fire. Someone had called the Capitol Heights fire station in Prince George’s County, Md., where Faruqi works, and deliberately given emergency responders the wrong address for the arson fire that was burning somewhere nearby.

The responders knew there was a fire – a house fire has a unique odor of wood and plastic that is unlike any other combustion, Faruqi said – but didn’t know where.

Circling a field searching for flames, Faruqi’s engine company spotted the blaze first. It was a house near the far end of the field billowing smoke, flames licking at the exterior.

Faruqi and the rest of the team propped up solid aluminum ladders near the windows to create escape routes for firefighters and trapped residents and set up a fire hose near the back of the house. Once the fire was contained, Faruqi climbed three stories up the ladder extending from the truck, picking off pieces of the burned roof with a metal hook.

At 6 a.m. Faruqi helped put out a fire in a burning building. At 12:45 p.m., he went to class in Foggy Bottom.

‘You get to be part of it’

Faruqi became a volunteer firefighter after taking an emergency medical technician class at GW three years ago. As a prospective pre-med student, he wanted to see whether he enjoyed the health care profession, he said. He joined EMeRG and a volunteer rescue squad in Virginia but wasn’t seeing the action he had hoped for, so he found the Capitol Heights station on the Internet.

He was looking for volunteer stations with two important criteria – a paramedic ambulance and a location near a Metro stop. Capitol Heights fit both. He called up and asked when he could come in.

Though there are four or five other volunteers, the station is still understaffed. Faruqi hopes his extraordinary experiences will inspire other GW students to undergo the EMT and crew training that is required before a volunteer can enter a burning building.

“I think the draw to my station is for people who want patient experience and EMS experience. If they’re pre-med, this is ideal because you get to see a lot and you get to do a lot,” Faruqi said. “It’s not like you’re an observer. You get to be part of it.”

Any qualified person can volunteer as a firefighter, he said, and though some stations require a minimum number of volunteer hours, the Capitol Heights station permits volunteers to ride only when they want to.

From Faruqi’s first fire with the Capitol Heights Volunteer Fire Department, he started to see the action he yearned for. A house was on fire, and the woman who lived there had accumulated so many belongings that it was nearly impossible to navigate. His first step inside he tripped over one of the piles, unable to see around the house.

“The smoke was so thick you couldn’t see anything. All you could see was the glow of fire. The whole kitchen was on fire and extending into the living room,” Faruqi said.

It’s times like that he questions what he has got himself into.

“That feeling is usually when I have the best time of my life,” he said. “If I come out the other end, I have a great story.”

It’s hard after calls like that to make the transition from firefighter to student, Faruqi said.

“It’s weird because you’ll have experiences like that, and then you’ll walk back and sit in your class and it feels like there’s no one there that can relate to me,” Faruqi said. “You feel out of place a little bit. It takes a little adjusting.”

‘It sticks with you’

Most of the career firefighters have learned to use humor to deal with fires that end badly. For men who face death on a daily basis, this is a coping mechanism.

“What can you do?” asked Brian Spies, a Capitol Heights firefighter. “You can’t sit around and feel bad about it.”

It’s a precarious balance between the two aspects of the job. Though their immediate duty is to put out fires, it’s the very thrill of the fire that keeps them going.

“It’s not exactly that we sit around hoping that someone’s house catches on fire. It’s more like if someone’s house is going to catch on fire, I hope it happens on my shift,” Spies said.

But for everyone the firefighters help, there is someone they can’t. Career firefighter Ted Armstrong at the Capitol Heights station said he’s seen the worst of human experiences, a sentiment expressed by everyone interviewed at the station. His most vivid recollection was responding to a suicide where the deceased woman had cleaned and packed up her entire house before hanging herself in the closet.

“It sticks with you. The images of people who have died are so vivid, but I can barely remember my daughter learning to ride a bike,” Armstrong said. “What makes you stick with it is the excitement of helping people. It’s the adrenaline rush.”

Another firefighter at the station, George Rayburn, said he’s seen it all in his experiences with the fire department. His laundry list includes a woman who suffocated her baby by rolling over on it, a patient with a head growing out of her back and homes filled with roaches and rats.

But many of the men say that after the period following 9/11, appreciation of firefighters has waned. Armstrong said the most salient example is when he drives the engine out on a call.

“People used to move out of the way miles ahead. Now I’m up on their bumper and they’re waving me around them,” Armstrong said.

But despite the grueling work and long hours, there are some calls that make it all worth it. Like when Faruqi found himself doing chest compressions to save the life of a one-month old after a call came in that a baby had stopped breathing.

“I looked up and the medic was running out of the front door of the house with the baby in his hands and I was like, shit, this is real,” Faruqi said. “Compressions on a baby are just two fingers, that’s how small they are.”

Another medic intubated the baby and got an intravenous medicine line going through the baby’s femoral vein in the thigh.

“Its heart finally kicked in. It was this little heartbeat, this little baby, a baby I’ve got milk in my fridge older than,” Faruqi said. “It was definitely one of those experiences that just stays with you.”

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