But here's a review from the National Post.
Firefighters silent as their job takes its toll
Memoir
Robert Wiersema, Weekend Post
Published: Saturday, July 26, 2008
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE
BY RUSSELL WANGERSKY
Thomas Allen
271 pp., $32.95
---
Most people have a fairly solid image of firefighters as heroic, stalwart, calendar-ready hunks dramatically backlit by flames, occasionally guilty of bad behaviour (excused by their sacrifices). As far as contemporary heroes go, firefighters are pretty much the pinnacle, especially after 9/11.
The trouble with this image is that it's almost entirely superficial, with little rooting in the reality of a firefighter's daily existence. And unlike those doctors, nurses, teachers and lawyers who have produced a body of literature exploring the interstices of their professional and personal lives, a firefighter has yet to write the definitive tell-all book about the heroics and, occasionally, heroic failures of the job.
Into this void steps Newfoundland writer Russell Wangersky, with a memoir of his eight years as a volunteer firefighter, and the lingering aftermath of those years. It is, at times, a shocking, brave work, the sort of book you sense the author needed to write. Wangersky dreamed of being a firefighter for most of his life, but, as he writes, "what had been a dream became a kind of personal nightmare, as bit by bit the underpinnings of wonder and heroics fell away. I was left with horrors I still live with now, horrors that can, occasionally, sneak up on me when I don't expect them, smashing my confidence and leaving me unable to control my temper or my fears."
Organized in a loosely chronological narrative, the book follows Wangersky from the age of 21, when he joins the volunteer fire department in Wolfville, N. S., training and gradually earning his place in the firehall. The narrative gains force and intensity as Wangersky recounts his experiences in the field. This is not the tabloid heroism of the breathless headlines: Wangersky captures the confusion and fear of being inside a burning building as floors suddenly disappear; the tragedies narrowly averted; the sense of shock as the crew struggles to recover the body of a woman from a car crash. Wangersky, a long-time journalist who is now the editor of The Telegram in St. John's, handles these scenes with a terse candour, balancing an in-the-moment experiential quality with a keen eye for detail and the larger ramifications of what happens.
The heart of the book, though, is in his account of the emotional toll it all takes. Volunteer firefighting is not the sort of job one leaves at the office: You're either waiting for calls that can come at any moment, or reeling in the wake of what has happened, bad or good. Add to that
the traditional silence of the department, where one does not talk about the emotional reaction to what one has witnessed, and you have the makings of a breakdown. Wangersky documents his steady spiral into post-traumatic stress disorder with a frankness that is at once brutal and emotionally devastating. He struggles with insomnia, obsession, incipient alcoholism and other difficulties. In the end, his dream costs him his mental health and his marriage, changing him in ways that probably still elude his full understanding. The sad irony for Wangersky and his colleagues in the firehall is that such sacrifices make the heroism that much more significant.
---
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
Readings and tragedies
I'm just back from a reading at Fisher's Loft in Port Rexton - a magnificent Newfoundland inn - where I read for a half an hour or so and realized something about the book that may not be good for me in the long run. More and more, after I read, people come up to me and tell me about their involvement in fires and accidents. I've heard from fire victims, relatives of fire victims, other firefighters, front-line emergency workers and 911 operators, all of whom tell me about their experiences. I'm glad they can find some release, but I find their experiences vivid and lately, some have even worked their way into my dreams as well. Very unsettling. One think I hadn't realized is that my experience is far from unique.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Voice from the past
Monday night, an e-mail turned up in my inbox, and last night, the telephone rang and it was Dave Hennessey. Dave was a firefighter who joined the Wolfville fire department at the same time I did, and features fairly prominently in the first part of Burning Down the House. He has a knack for finding me, and bringing me up to speed on a whole bunch of things. But last night, I was surprised to learn that my old department played a critical role in bringing critical stress debriefing to Nova Scotia fire departments - and that one of the fire captains I knew well, Sandy Fraser, had gone on to work with departments all over the province to help deal with traumatic fires and accidents. There are plenty of fire departments that now are well on top of the issue: as part of its training program, for example, Riverview, New Brunswick now has family members of prospective first responders come in for preliminary courses, too. As for Wolfville and critical stress debriefing, I'm glad to hear one of my old departments has played such a prominent role.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Dissected gently by Enright
There are those who like him, and those who don't, but one thing you can say about CBC's Michael Enright is that he's pretty darned good at what he does. He's one of the few interviewers who is downright likely to ask you about something you might have written in 1987, and he asks questions that, while you're answering them, a part of your brain is screaming "Do I really want to answer this?" But of course, by then it's too late. So a half-hour or so talking to him about Burning Down the House was something I both looked forward to, and at the same time, dreaded. Was I glad to have the opportunity to be on Sunday Edition? Of course. Was it professional and insightful and thorough? Yes. Without a doubt. But I'd sure hate to have Enright gunning for me. He's too fast, and too good. I have now appeared in an interview that made me feel completely naked, and that's still available in podcast form on their site.
Wonderful.
Wonderful.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Review from the Hour in Montreal
May 8th, 2008
Burning Down the House - Web exclusive!
Write a comment on this article !
Hot damn
Melora Koepke
Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing Myself, by Russell Wangersky (Thomas Allen), 271 pp.
Ex-firefighter Russell Wangersky mines the glowing embers of his mind and produces an affecting tale
Russell Wangersky's memoir, Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing Myself, is a book that would not be written by most firefighters. There are taboos about talking about what you see, with your brothers or your families, let alone a reading public. You cannot talk about what nobody talks about, especially the nagging uncertainty about whether you even helped, or what it means to help, or whether there is any help to give. Nobody is supposed to remember things this well, the fires and accident scenes and injuries and deaths they've seen over the course of their years as a volunteer firefighter. But of course - and this is the first secret that Wangersky reveals - they do. At least Wangersky does, in searing, clear, torturous detail. One suspects his ultra-precise writer's eye for surveying detail and analyzing situations contributed to his skill as a firefighter (he was twice voted Firefighter of the Year by the brotherhood) as well as to the post-traumatic stress syndrome that finally dismantled his self, his sanity and his ability to live his own day-to-day life.
Wangersky, the editor-in-chief of the St-John's Telegram who began volunteer firefighting in the Maritimes as a 20-year-old with an honours degree in philosophy, relates, with patient precision, what it's like to be the first on the scene for countless unimaginable human tragedies, and for these kinds of events to be exactly the opposite of "unimaginable." They are in fact ever present in Wangersky's imagination; his waking hours and sleep have both been constantly interrupted by hallucinations and nightmares of accidents, injuries and deaths unfolding again and again.
His renderings of long-ago events are carved into the page so sharply and baroquely that readers will almost see them as he does, and as though they had also been there. Wangersky's first book, a collection of short stories entitled The Hour of Bad Decisions, was long-listed for the Giller and Commonwealth Writers' Prizes, and here he is describing his own life. The images are so well rendered, in fact, that the prose might call attention to itself, if it was something else that was being written about. But the fact is that Wangersky has such a story to tell us that the tightly controlled, occasionally extravagant writing only serves to send the point home.
Certainly, there is material here for readers curious about what fire can do to a house, or a person trapped inside, or about the mechanics of removing someone's twisted limbs from a car or a piece of farm equipment. But Wangersky has created a strange, effective structure for his memories. In chapters about various scenes, fires and victims he has seen, has helped or not helped, he is mapping the landscape of his own mind, looking for a way through.
Burning Down the House - Web exclusive!
Write a comment on this article !
Hot damn
Melora Koepke
Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing Myself, by Russell Wangersky (Thomas Allen), 271 pp.
Ex-firefighter Russell Wangersky mines the glowing embers of his mind and produces an affecting tale
Russell Wangersky's memoir, Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing Myself, is a book that would not be written by most firefighters. There are taboos about talking about what you see, with your brothers or your families, let alone a reading public. You cannot talk about what nobody talks about, especially the nagging uncertainty about whether you even helped, or what it means to help, or whether there is any help to give. Nobody is supposed to remember things this well, the fires and accident scenes and injuries and deaths they've seen over the course of their years as a volunteer firefighter. But of course - and this is the first secret that Wangersky reveals - they do. At least Wangersky does, in searing, clear, torturous detail. One suspects his ultra-precise writer's eye for surveying detail and analyzing situations contributed to his skill as a firefighter (he was twice voted Firefighter of the Year by the brotherhood) as well as to the post-traumatic stress syndrome that finally dismantled his self, his sanity and his ability to live his own day-to-day life.
Wangersky, the editor-in-chief of the St-John's Telegram who began volunteer firefighting in the Maritimes as a 20-year-old with an honours degree in philosophy, relates, with patient precision, what it's like to be the first on the scene for countless unimaginable human tragedies, and for these kinds of events to be exactly the opposite of "unimaginable." They are in fact ever present in Wangersky's imagination; his waking hours and sleep have both been constantly interrupted by hallucinations and nightmares of accidents, injuries and deaths unfolding again and again.
His renderings of long-ago events are carved into the page so sharply and baroquely that readers will almost see them as he does, and as though they had also been there. Wangersky's first book, a collection of short stories entitled The Hour of Bad Decisions, was long-listed for the Giller and Commonwealth Writers' Prizes, and here he is describing his own life. The images are so well rendered, in fact, that the prose might call attention to itself, if it was something else that was being written about. But the fact is that Wangersky has such a story to tell us that the tightly controlled, occasionally extravagant writing only serves to send the point home.
Certainly, there is material here for readers curious about what fire can do to a house, or a person trapped inside, or about the mechanics of removing someone's twisted limbs from a car or a piece of farm equipment. But Wangersky has created a strange, effective structure for his memories. In chapters about various scenes, fires and victims he has seen, has helped or not helped, he is mapping the landscape of his own mind, looking for a way through.
Back from the road...
Just back from Burlington, Ontario, and the Different Drummer bookstore's reading series. It boasts that it's Canada's longest-running reading series, and it sure knows how to do thing right. Nine o'clock on a sunny spring morning, and 220 people show up to hear three authors read. It is an amazing event, and an amazing bookstore. If you're ever in Burlington, take the time to see an independent bookstore that really knows its stuff.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Another story...
This one's from the Kentville Advertiser - and what I love about it is that the reporter went back and talked to some of the firefighters I worked with in Wolfville.
BY WENDY ELLIOTT
welliott@kentvilleadvertiser.ca
NovaNewsNow.com
Many young boys dream of becoming a firefighter. However, for Russell Wangersky, it wasn’t long before his dream job turned into a nightmare.
Burning Down the House is the true story of this critically acclaimed author’s eight-year career as a volunteer firefighter.
Wangersky was an Acadia University student working in the periodicals section of the Vaughan Library when he applied to join the Wolfville Volunteer Fire Department. It was 1983.
He and Wolfville native David Hennessey were young and enthusiastic recruits. Under the tutelage of veterans like Gerald Wood, Tim MacLeod and Harold Stewart, Wangersky learned the ropes.
He saw his first dead body after an accident in Gaspereau and, almost surprisingly, he became hooked on the fire service. About 18 months later, Wangersky left Wolfville to pursue work in Ontario. He served later as a firefighter outside St. John’s, Newfoundland and reached the rank of deputy chief.
Burning Down the House offers a unique insider’s vision of the often dangerous world of firefighting. It’s a heartfelt memoir about the emotional and psychological toll firefighting took on Wangersky’s personal life, including his marriage, family and, ultimately, his mind.
Written in a visceral literary prose, Wangersky takes readers with him on a harrowing journey of car accidents, house fires and medical calls. Building a map of traumatic memories — from performing CPR on a colleague’s father to close calls in house fires and an almost fatal fuel explosion — Wangersky reveals the secrets of firefighting that many emergency workers never let themselves admit.
He still suffers night terrors when he wakes up reliving first responder situations.
Haunted by pieces of experience
Bob Cook, who is the mechanic on staff at the Wolfville station, can relate. He says most volunteers are haunted by pieces of their experience. For him, it was a collision involving a girl about the same age as his daughters.
Today, Cook says those in the fire service are better at recognizing when their peers need help. “People aren’t smoke-eaters anymore. They don’t have to be big heroes. If they withdraw and change character, we know they need help.”
Tim MacLeod, who is now Wolfville’s fire chief, remembers Wangersky and that accident in Gaspereau. He has read Burning Down the House and compliments the author, saying, “it’s a good read.”
MacLeod says firefighters compartmentalize the trauma they experience in different ways. Since the early ‘80s, Critical Incident Stress Debriefings have been instituted so the mental health of members can be maintained.
According to MacLeod, all firefighters will recognize the adrenalin rush Wangersky describes so well. He adds that most go on auto pilot when actually firefighting.
“It’s afterward that you replay it,” he says. “Collisions are hard to swallow. You have to be heartless. There aren’t a lot of breaks in the fire service.”
MacLeod notes that the department Wangersky went to in Newfoundland was about half the size of Wolfville’s, but “you can see a lot of shit in eight years,” he says of his career fighting fires.
The fire chief remembers the author as an atypical recruit in the sense of size. “He was a little guy.” He says his department trains about six or seven recruits each year.
“We’ve had some really good students. They get better training now,” notes MacLeod. “One went on to be fire chief in Niagara-on-the-Lake.”
The managing editor of the Telegram in St. John’s, Wangersky is also a writer whose first collection of short stories, The Hour of Bad Decisions, was longlisted for a Giller Award. Burning Down the House sells for $32.95.
BY WENDY ELLIOTT
welliott@kentvilleadvertiser.ca
NovaNewsNow.com
Many young boys dream of becoming a firefighter. However, for Russell Wangersky, it wasn’t long before his dream job turned into a nightmare.
Burning Down the House is the true story of this critically acclaimed author’s eight-year career as a volunteer firefighter.
Wangersky was an Acadia University student working in the periodicals section of the Vaughan Library when he applied to join the Wolfville Volunteer Fire Department. It was 1983.
He and Wolfville native David Hennessey were young and enthusiastic recruits. Under the tutelage of veterans like Gerald Wood, Tim MacLeod and Harold Stewart, Wangersky learned the ropes.
He saw his first dead body after an accident in Gaspereau and, almost surprisingly, he became hooked on the fire service. About 18 months later, Wangersky left Wolfville to pursue work in Ontario. He served later as a firefighter outside St. John’s, Newfoundland and reached the rank of deputy chief.
Burning Down the House offers a unique insider’s vision of the often dangerous world of firefighting. It’s a heartfelt memoir about the emotional and psychological toll firefighting took on Wangersky’s personal life, including his marriage, family and, ultimately, his mind.
Written in a visceral literary prose, Wangersky takes readers with him on a harrowing journey of car accidents, house fires and medical calls. Building a map of traumatic memories — from performing CPR on a colleague’s father to close calls in house fires and an almost fatal fuel explosion — Wangersky reveals the secrets of firefighting that many emergency workers never let themselves admit.
He still suffers night terrors when he wakes up reliving first responder situations.
Haunted by pieces of experience
Bob Cook, who is the mechanic on staff at the Wolfville station, can relate. He says most volunteers are haunted by pieces of their experience. For him, it was a collision involving a girl about the same age as his daughters.
Today, Cook says those in the fire service are better at recognizing when their peers need help. “People aren’t smoke-eaters anymore. They don’t have to be big heroes. If they withdraw and change character, we know they need help.”
Tim MacLeod, who is now Wolfville’s fire chief, remembers Wangersky and that accident in Gaspereau. He has read Burning Down the House and compliments the author, saying, “it’s a good read.”
MacLeod says firefighters compartmentalize the trauma they experience in different ways. Since the early ‘80s, Critical Incident Stress Debriefings have been instituted so the mental health of members can be maintained.
According to MacLeod, all firefighters will recognize the adrenalin rush Wangersky describes so well. He adds that most go on auto pilot when actually firefighting.
“It’s afterward that you replay it,” he says. “Collisions are hard to swallow. You have to be heartless. There aren’t a lot of breaks in the fire service.”
MacLeod notes that the department Wangersky went to in Newfoundland was about half the size of Wolfville’s, but “you can see a lot of shit in eight years,” he says of his career fighting fires.
The fire chief remembers the author as an atypical recruit in the sense of size. “He was a little guy.” He says his department trains about six or seven recruits each year.
“We’ve had some really good students. They get better training now,” notes MacLeod. “One went on to be fire chief in Niagara-on-the-Lake.”
The managing editor of the Telegram in St. John’s, Wangersky is also a writer whose first collection of short stories, The Hour of Bad Decisions, was longlisted for a Giller Award. Burning Down the House sells for $32.95.
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